JaanYar
Chapter 1 of 18

Fennel

The Essentials

A crate of whole fennel bulbs at a market, pale white layered bulbs with green stalks and feathery fronds still attached
The fennel bulb is the swollen base of the stalks — buy it firm, white and unbruised.

Fennel is the sweet, licorice-scented seed whose anethole gives it real carminative (traditionally used to settle gas and bloating) effect on gas. Small randomised trials also support it for primary dysmenorrhea, and — at low, professionally prepared doses — for infant colic.

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A pinch chewed after a meal is a two-thousand-year Persian and Indian habit, and a safe one.

The culinary seed and bulb are broadly safe. The concentrated essential oil (the concentrated aromatic oil of the plant) isn't for internal use in pregnancy or in infants.

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) seeds smell sweet and a little like licorice. In Persian and Indian tradition, people chew them after a meal to help digestion and freshen the breath. Their main aromatic compound, anethole, is what helps settle gas and bloating.