More than 180 spice-derived compounds have been identified and explored for their health benefits (Aggarwal et al. 2008). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to deal with all herbs and spices that may influence the risk of cancer and tumor behavior. Therefore, a decision was made to review those with some of the more impressive biological responses reported in the literature, and a conscious effort was made to provide information about the amount of spices needed to bring about a response and thus their physiological relevance. When possible, recent reviews are included to provide readers with additional insights into the biological response(s) to specific spices and to prevent duplication of the scientific literature. Because there is a separate chapter devoted to curcumin (a bioactive component in turmeric) in this book and there are also several excellent reviews published about curcumin (Patel and Majumdar 2009; Aggarwal 2010; Bar-Sela, Epelbaum, and Schaffer 2010; Epstein, Sanderson, and Macdonald 2010), turmeric is not discussed in this chapter.
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