"...To look at the chemical composition of any common food plant
is to realize just how much complexity lurks within it. Here's a list
of just the antioxidants that have been identified in garden-variety
thyme:
"4-Terpineol, alanine, anethole, apigenin,
ascorbic acid, beta carotene, caffeic acid, camphene, carvacrol,
chlorogenic acid, chrysoeriol, eriodictyol, eugenol, ferulic acid,
gallic acid, gamma- terpinene isochlorogenic acid, isoeugenol,
isothymonin, kaempferol, labiatic acid, lauric acid, linalyl acetate,
luteolin, methionine, myrcene, myristic acid, naringenin, oleanolic
acid, p-coumoric acid, p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, palmitic acid,
rosmarinic acid, selenium, tannin, thymol, tryptophan, ursolic acid,
vanillic acid.
"This is what you're ingesting when you
eat food flavored with thyme. Some of these chemicals are broken down
by your digestion, but others are going on to do undetermined things
to your body: turning some gene's expression on or off, perhaps, or
heading off a free radical before it disturbs a strand of DNA deep in
some cell. It would be great to know how this all works, but in the
meantime we can enjoy thyme in the knowledge that it probably doesn't
do any harm (since people have been eating it forever) and that it may
actually do some good (since people have been eating it forever) and
that even if it does nothing, we like the way it tastes."
-- Michael Pollan, "Unhappy Meals", January 28, 2007, "The New York
Times Magazine".
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html