In ancient Greece, students tucked sprigs of this spicy, pine-scented herb in their hair, supposedly to improve their ability to study. That's how rosemary came by its reputation as a memory sharpener. That particular ability has yet to be proven, but other traditional uses for rosemary are holding up under scrutiny in the laboratory, and some additional benefits are being discovered as well. Rosemary works so well at preventing fats from becoming rancid that the food industry sometimes uses extracts of rosemary oil as a food preservative.
Rosemary oil is a strong antioxidant-which means it protects fats from being attacked by oxygen.
Because oxygen damage is also known to be a factor in the development of cancer, researchers have been looking at its potential in this area as well. Several studies done in the last several years show that oil from the leaves of the very plant sold as a spice for flavoring can help prevent the development of cancerous tumors in laboratory animals. In one study, led by Chi-Tang Ho, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Food Science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, applying rosemary oil to the skin of experimental animals reduced their risk of cancer to half that found in animals that did not receive the application of oil. In other studies by the same research team, animals whose diets contained some rosemary oil had about half the incidence of colon cancer or lung cancer compared with animals not eating rosemary. And researchers at the University of Illinois in Urbana found that rosemary cut by half the incidence of breast cancer in animals at high risk for developing the disease.