Methi Dana - A healthy addition to your diet Known for its medicinal qualities such as hypocholesterolemic, antidiabetic, gastric stimulant, antioxidant, anticarcinogenic and immunological activities, Fenugreek, commonly called Methi Dana/ Seeds in Indian households, is a legume. This is used as a spice throughout the world to enhance the sensory quality of foods and moreover it is used as a food stabilizer, adhesive and emulsifying agent due to its high fibre, protein and gum content. Methi seeds are pleasantly bitter and slightly sweet in taste whereas Methi seed has a central hard and yellow embryo which is surrounded by a corneous and comparatively large layer of white and semi- transparent endosperm. These seeds of Methi contain about 0.1-0.9% of diosgenin which are extracted commercially. The plant tissue cultures from the seeds of Methi produces as much as 2% diosgenin with smaller amounts of trigogenin and gitongenin when grown under optimal conditions. In addition to that, fenugreek seeds have been found to contain a number of alkaloids (e.g., trigonelline, gentianine, carpaine) as well as several coumarin compounds and saponin (fenugrin B).
Fenugreek seed traces its history from the Ayurvedic texts and Greek and Latin pharmacopoeia. The modern vaidyas use this herb for digestive and respiratory stemming from an excess of kaph (phlegm) and vat (wind). But unlike the modern vaidyas, Ayurvedic texts praised this herb for its power as an aphrodisiac. Methi has been in use in Egypt since a long time. It was used to ease childbirth and to increase milk flow whereas nowadays, Egyptian women still use it to relieve menstrual cramps, as well as to make hilba tea out of it to ease other kinds of abdominal pain. Methi seeds are also in use in China for the same purpose, i.e., treating abdominal pain and there it is known as hu lu ba. The Swiss use it for flavoring cheese and in USA, it is mainly used to make spice blends for soups and stews. And as Indians we use fresh methi ka saag (the stems and leaves of the plant) as a winter vegetable, and the seeds as a flavoring agent for various dishes, year-round.