 Supplement manufacturers often fall into the same reductionist trap as the drug companies. Herbs are assumed to only have one main active ingredient, so if you can isolate it and purify it into a pill, the thinking goes, you can boost the effects. Cracoumon is described as the active ingredient in turmeric, but is it the active ingredient or just a active ingredient? It's just one of many different components of the whole food spice. There's also cyclo-cracoumon, and curcumines, and turmerine, and turmerone, to merinol. Only limited studies have compared the potential of turmeric with curcumin, but some suggest turmeric, the whole food, may work even better. And not just against colon cancer cells. This group of researchers at Anderson Cancer Center in Texas pitted curcumin against 7 different types of human cancer cells in vitro, and also turmeric. For example, curcumin kicks butt against breast cancer cells, but turmeric, the whole food, kicks even more butt. Curcumin against pancreatic cancer? Turmeric against pancreatic cancer. Colon cancer. Multiple myeloma, myelogenous leukemia, and more colorectal cancer. They found that turmeric was more potent compared to curcumin, and suggesting that components other than curcumin can also contribute to anti-cancer activities. Most clinical studies treating diseases in people have used curcumin supplements as opposed to whole turmeric, but none have tried using turmeric components other than curcumin. But see, even curcumin-free turmeric exhibits anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activities. Although curcumin is believed to account for most activities of turmeric, researchers over the past decades has indicated that curcumin-free turmeric, so turmeric with the so-called active ingredient removed, is as effective or even more effective than curcumin-containing turmeric. There are termarones, for example, in turmeric, but processed out to make curcumin supplements, which may exhibit both anti-cancer as well as anti-inflammatory activities. So I assume this review would conclude, let's stop giving people curcumin supplements, and just give people the whole food spice turmeric. But instead, they were like, hey, let's make all sorts of different turmeric-derived supplements.