Got that zing?

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It’s no wonder fresh ginger tastes pungent. It contains a family of molecules called gingerols that are structurally related to capsaicin, the compound responsible for the hot bite of chiles.

Challenge a cook to spice up a bland dish, and the obvious choice is ginger. No other seasoning combines the zing of a chile with a clean hit of citrus and the sweet bouquet of a spice such as cardamom or cloves. What a gift, then, that ginger comes with a bounteous platter of health benefits.

Derived from the rhizome (or subterranean stem) of Zingiber officinale, ginger is native to the Orient. It’s now grown in virtually all tropical regions and favored in nearly every cuisine and system of folk medicine. Healers use it for nausea, colic, gas, heartburn, ulcers, for motion and morning sicknesses, for coughs, and for osteoarthritis. Want a paradox and a mystery? Ginger helps warm you when you’re chilled, but it’s also sometimes used to reduce fever.

Recent data from researchers suggests that ginger has value in all these situations. Unfortunately, such research, despite the number of studies, has left more questions than answers. A few studies have been conducted using compounds isolated from ginger, such as one or more of the shogaols or gingerols, but most studies use dried ginger powder with an undetermined quantity of active compounds. When the spice is dried or cooked, gingerols are converted to shogaols, so the form of ginger used and the way in which it’s cooked may make a difference. Both fresh and powdered ginger possess healing compounds, but in varying amounts.

That said, you don’t need a research degree to use ginger to chase away mild nausea or a case of the chills—or to tell you whether you find it delicious. Below is a brief summary of the research that does exist to date.

The nausea conqueror

Virtually everyone suffers nausea and vomiting at some point. Although scientific studies conflict on the degree to which ginger quells nausea, consensus holds that it reduces the severity and frequency of vomiting in motion and morning sickness, and possibly following minor surgery and chemotherapy.

Two studies conducted on rough open seas demonstrated ginger’s effectiveness in preventing motion sickness. One involved eighty Danish navy cadets. None of those who ate 1 g of powdered ginger before sailing got seasick, but five of the forty placebo-treated cadets became nauseated. In the second study, performed on tourist volunteers on a Norwegian whaling excursion, 80 percent of those who took no drug became seasick, but less than 10 percent of those who ate ginger four hours prior to the trip had symptoms. Fewer than 25 percent of ginger-treated passengers felt any motion-related distress. However, investigators in another study that used a rotating chair claimed that ginger was ineffective in preventing motion sickness. It’s probably that the studies conducted in real-sea situations furnished more relevant data.