South Sea Ginger: Trendy Ingredient with Great Potential

Meet a spice that’s going places: In Europe alone, ginger was used as an ingredient in more than 3,600 newly launched food products in 2015 - more than twice as many as in 2010. Bolasco, a longstanding expert in natural fruit ingredients, heads to the South Seas for this trendy ingredient, and sources its supply from the local market leader, Buderim Ginger.

A special spice

“Ginger from the South Seas?” – Product developers might initially wonder, as most people associate ginger first and foremost with Asia, probably because the spice is an integral part of Asian cuisine, which has become increasingly popular in northern latitudes for some time now.

Ginger is also rooted in China from a literary and historical point of view. As early as 2800 BC the Chinese emperor Shennong described it in his book on medicinal plants, the Shennong Pen Tsao Ching. And Confucius valued ginger for its beneficial effects in treating colds, pain or gastrointestinal complaints, for example.

We now know that the root of the ginger plant - “Zingiber officinale” in Latin - has health-promoting effects due to the beneficial substances it contains. Among the 160 substances found in ginger are vitamins C and B6, minerals, and essential oils. Ginger stimulates the metabolism and inhibits enzymes that cause inflammation and pain – just like acetylsalicylic acid, which is why the spice is also called “natural aspirin”.

 

Provenance makes all the difference