{"id":313,"date":"2023-05-29T18:30:27","date_gmt":"2023-05-29T22:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/?p=313"},"modified":"2023-05-29T18:40:19","modified_gmt":"2023-05-29T22:40:19","slug":"natural-dyes-wonderful-curcumin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/2023\/05\/29\/natural-dyes-wonderful-curcumin\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Dyes &#8211; wonderful Curcumin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When our group visited the wonderful Tse-xin Tamsui Farm near Taipei, one of the activities we did was dye a cotton cloth with the yellow spice\/root turmeric. The active ingredient in turmeric is called <strong>curcumin<\/strong> and it has a really interesting chemistry. First of all, it&#8217;s used in many places as a spice and then it&#8217;s used as a natural food or cloth dye (the way we used it). It is extremely non-toxic and there are scientific studies that show you can eat about 10 grams\/day! (that&#8217;s a lot &#8211; about 3 tablespoons) without any harmful effects. As a cloth dye, it is unstable in the sunlight so it fades (and that has to do with its chemistry). As a food dye, it is completely natural so it is not a &#8220;chemically&#8221; produced food dye (that is a good thing). It&#8217;s approved for food use by many state regulatory agencies like the US-FDA and the European Union. But, for me, one of its most interesting aspects is that it has demonstrated to be extremely beneficial in terms of health. At Vassar, we&#8217;ve synthesized some complexes using curcumin that have shown to be active against certain tumors and so that is a really promising area of research. Its molecular structure is responsible for why it&#8217;s such an interesting molecule with many applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When our group visited the wonderful Tse-xin Tamsui Farm near Taipei, one of the activities we did was dye a cotton cloth with the yellow spice\/root turmeric. The active ingredient in turmeric is called curcumin and it has a really interesting chemistry. First of all, it&#8217;s used in many places as a spice and then &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/2023\/05\/29\/natural-dyes-wonderful-curcumin\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Natural Dyes &#8211; wonderful Curcumin&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-log"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/taiwan-summer-trip-2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}