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Comment by markdown | Hacker News Reader

> she began taking turmeric capsules at a dose of 2,250 mg per day.

That's a teaspoon. The average South-east asian eats close to that much in a day for their entire lives.

I think that's 2.2g curcumin. Powdered turmeric, the spice, contains approximately 3% curcumin by weight. So one teaspoon turmeric sounds like it's pretty close to the RDA.

The article very clearly states that she was taking turmeric supplement, not curcumin.

I just searched for tumeric black pepper extract and this[1] was the first product hits I got. It's called "Turmeric Curcumin with Black Pepper, 2250mg", and the bottle predominantly says "Turmeric" in a large font with the rest in a very small font.

The description states:

Each serving of Qunol Turmeric capsules' formulation contains 2250mg of curcumin with 95% curcuminoids. Other turmeric formulations may only contain 5% curcuminoids.

[1]: https://www.qunol.com/products/turmeric-2250

There's probably hundreds of brands of turmeric and black pepper though, it's a common supplement combination.

The point was that there are capsules out there marketed as turmeic supplement which are almost pure curcumin, so it's not unlikely the article referred to them as turmeic capsules while they were technically curcumin capsules.

In that case, I'm very disappointed in the journalist who wrote this piece, and it's significantly lowered my opinion of Ars Technica that they allowed it to be published in this state.

I quoted them verbatim.

Yeah? So? I still think she took 2.2g curcumin, not turmeric.

That's unlikely, the turmeric used in asian cuisine contains about 3-5% curcumin while what's commonly sold as "turmeric" capsules/supplement often contain > 90%. Some may contain less but are mixed in with piperine that significantly boosts its effects/toxicity

Eh, black pepper is common in masala. Nothing toxic about it on its own or combined with turmeric as it so often is in Indian cooking.

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