Luscious hot chocolate that just zings with aromatic spices, perfect for any day but especially good for flu season because it's packed with powerful immune-boosting ingredients.

I've been taking advantage of these days in quarantine to get as much work done around the house. I've managed to get a bunch of projects done that I had parked away until I had the time.

But I've also taken some time to think about the current state of affairs. I've always believed that no man is an island, but that seems even more true right now. I'm not sure what scares me the most if it's what's going on at the moment or the economic whiplash we are all about to suffer.

The only solace I find is that we will get through this together.

So I've been thinking about what little grain of salt I can bring to the table. And I thought that posting immune-boosting recipes was frankly one of the best solutions I could come up with.

Don't worry, I will still try to indulge that sweet tooth of yours. I will just try to post healthier things a bit more often than I usually do until this craziness is over with.

Enter Tumeric Chai hot Chocolate. It has all those ingredients we need right now to lend our immune system an extra boost, yet all the deliciousness and comfort from a piping hot cup of cocoa.

All the ingredients in this creamy, spicy, and satisfying hot chocolate have been used for centuries in folk medicine to ward off colds and flues. Modern science started looking into why they work. I did my best to research what makes these ingredients such potent immune boosters.

Immune system boosting properties of chocolate

Let's start off with cocoa, because who doesn't love chocolate?

tumeric hot chocolate in chai wallah caddy

Cocoa comes from the Theobroma Cacao tree. A tree that Archeology has unveiled to being native to my corner of the world. In fact, they pinpointed its origin to one precise area — at the foot of the Andes Mountains between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers smack bang in the middle of Colombia and Ecuador.

But before I go off topic and become ultra chauvinistic about why Colombia is the best country in the world, let's talk about chocolate.

We all know how tasty it is but probably never realized that we had been stuffing our faces with one of Nature's superfoods all these years.

Chocolate is loaded in polyphenols, powerful micronutrients. Polyphenols are found in berries and some stone fruit, chocolate, tea, red wine, and a few vegetables.

Reportedly the polyphenols in chocolate have many health benefits; reducing inflammation, improving blood flow, lowering bad cholesterol, blood sugar levels. All of which contribute to reducing the chance of stroke and heart disease. It seems that cocoa and dark chocolate can increase the overall health of your nervous system and mental functions, reduce stress, and improve your mood.

Its no wonder we all reach for some chocolate when we're down.

You must be wondering how chocolate improves your mood. It's not only because it tastes good, although I have to admit I do think that helps, but rather because of the chemistry involved when you eat chocolate.

You see, your body will naturally take the naturally occurring tryptophan in chocolate, an important amino acid, and transform it into serotonin, your body’s natural mood stabilizer.

To top it all off cocoa has other compounds like theobromine and theophylline. Both of these are incredibly beneficial in curing persistent coughing. Theophylline seems to improve lung capacity by dilating the lungs, relaxing the airwaves and decreasing inflammation.

Health benefits of Turmeric, ginger and cardamom

Turmeric, ginger, and cardamom are members of the Zingiberaceae family and share certain properties and compounds. They all have impressive antiseptic properties and have been used for millennia for food preservation because of that.

Turmeric is both antibacterial and analgesic making it a miracle herb. It’s been used in Oriental medicine to treat cancer and depression for thousands of years. Furthermore, the compounds in turmeric have shown to stimulate the nervous system helping people deal with stress, improving mood and general mental well being.

It also aids the immune system to fight off viruses and bacteria so it’s especially beneficial to add to your diet during any flu season.

Not to mention that turmeric is delicious, it's like a floral and super perfumed ginger, with slightly less kick.

Like turmeric, cardamom has been used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat several ailments ranging from digestive problems, depression, and elevated blood pressure. It's also used extensively to treat flu and colds thanks to one of its volatile compounds called Cineole. Cineole aids the body in fighting viruses, bacteria, and fungal infections.

Cardamom is also a potent diuretic making it a great detoxifier.

And if that is not reason enough to add more cardamom into your diet maybe this will. Studies performed on lab rats and on cancer cells in Petri dishes show that two chemical compounds in the spice slow cancer growth.

I have always found that cardamom is the most underestimated spice there is. I love anything with cardamom, and now this love only feels even more justified than before, so all I can say is that cardamom will be making more of a cameo in my cooking from now on.

Which leads me to ginger. Ginger has a very long history of medicinal use. It is used to treat digestive problems and nausea. It reduces inflammation, helps fight cases of the flu and common colds. It’s also a delicious way to treat menstrual pain.

Like other members of its family it seems to lower blood sugar, bad cholesterol, fight cancer and improve brain and memory functions.

Furthermore ginger seems to be an effective treatment against several respiratory viruses, so adding it to your diet seems extra appropriate for the time being.

Health benefits of honey

I added honey to this hot chocolate not only because of my borderline obsession with honey and how good it tastes but because of the amazing health benefits that honey brings to the table. Honey is teeming with all sorts of antioxidants that help fight free radicals.

The compounds in honey seem to increase blood flow to your heart and reduce the risk of blood clot formation, they also lower inflammation, triglycerides, and the “bad” LDL cholesterol while raising the “good” HDL cholesterol.

Honey also has proven itself more than amply to be a great cough suppressant and a natural way to heal a sore throat. It’s not surprising that honey has proven to be as effective or even better than some over-the-counter cough medications.

In fact, the antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effects that honey has on the body have long been used. And when I say long been used I mean Ancient Egyptians treated honey as the most basic of their medicines. They applied it topically to wounds to speed up the healing process, and mixed up will al manner or herbs to treat different ailments.

You might be thinking that putting a sugar-heavy kitchen staple on a wound is a bad idea, well, think again. Honey has an enzyme called glucose oxidase. When this enzyme touches a wound or reaches your stomach, it becomes hydrogen peroxide. That's were honey's antiseptic properties come from.

Many studies show that when treating burns or wounds, honey's healing properties are not that far off compared to modern ointments.

beneficial properties of cinnamon

Another one of the indispensable herbs that Ancient Egyptian doctors heavily relied on was cinnamon.

This herb has won the world over not only because of it’s delicious taste but because of the plethora of health benefits it has.

Cinnamon is rich with cinnamaldehyde a compound that is said to reduce insulin resistance, a key metabolic hormone, meaning that cinnamon can help you can regulate your metabolism and blood sugar. It's also anti-inflammatory and helps your body repair tissue damage.

Cinnamon also contributes to lowering bad cholesterol, triglycerides and reducing blood pressure.

Furthermore, studies have shown that some of the compounds present in cinnamon are toxic to certain cancer cells and seem to stunt tumor growth. Those same compounds prove to be toxic to bacteria and fungus and are the reason why cinnamon has been used as a food preservative for centuries.

To top it all off cinnamon helps your immune system put up a fight against many viruses.

Why you should add cloves and tea to your diet

Cloves are also another magic cure-all in Ayurvedic medicine. They have a very high in antioxidants, like eugenol which has proven to be even more effective in fighting free radicals than many vitamins are.

Eugenol has been tested in animals and has shown to promote good bone health by improving bone density and strength, reducing signs of aging and warding off osteoporosis.

Cloves also help suppress cancer growth, kill harmful bacteria and fungus, and regulate blood sugar.

This leads me to the last miracle ingredient in this chocolate concoction; tea.

I think we have all heard about the incredible health benefits of tea at some point or other in our lives. These range from lowering blood sugar levels. Tea also has a very high content of polyphenols, so just like chocolate, tea seems to reduce the chances of stroke and heart disease.

By now I hope you are convinced of all the benefits of my turmeric chai hot chocolate. You need to make it ASAP. It's packed with all those pick-me-uppers we need right now, and the taste is just amazing.

So go on and treat yourself today. You'll thank me later.

Yield: 2

Author: Michelle Bessudo

Turmeric Chai Hot Chocolate

Prep time: 2 MCook time: 5 MTotal time: 7 M

Luscious hot chocolate that just zings with aromatic spices, perfect for any day but especially good for flu season because it's packed with powerful immune-boosting ingredients.