Saffron: The World's Priciest Spice Goes Looking for Your Low Mood

The Oasis Health Journal · Submitted June 28, 2026 · 8:17 AM ET

Saffron costs more than gold. Not as a figure of speech. Gram for gram, the threads in that tiny jar have out-priced the metal for most of recorded history.

Here is why. Saffron is the stigma of the Crocus sativus flower. Each flower offers up three crimson threads, and each thread weighs about 2 milligrams. Someone has to pick them. By hand. A pound of saffron runs roughly 800 to 2,500 dollars, and most of that price is careful tweezing.

For a spice that fancy, you would hope it does something useful. A large 2025 trial decided to test whether one of those things is lifting a low mood.

The 2025 trial

Published in The Journal of Nutrition, it is the biggest saffron mood study run to date: 202 generally healthy adults, ages 18 to 70, all carrying subclinical depressive symptoms. Down, but not clinically diagnosed. The blue, not the diagnosis.

Half took 28 mg of a standardized saffron extract per day (14 mg in the morning, 14 mg at night). Half took a placebo. Twelve weeks, double-blind, nobody knew who got the real threads.

The results: 72 percent of the saffron group improved meaningfully, versus 54 percent on placebo. The saffron group's low-mood score (the depression part of the DASS-21 scale) fell about 53 percent. Mood and stress started shifting around week five, which is roughly how long it takes most people to forget they signed up for a study.

Sleep was more of a shrug. Overall, no difference between the groups. But the people who showed up already sleeping badly did better on saffron (about a 12 percent drop in sleep disturbance versus 8 percent on placebo). Saffron did not fix everyone's sleep. It nudged some of the sleep that was already broken.

The part the headlines skip

Now the honesty section, because that is the house style here.

Look at that placebo number again. 54 percent of people improved on nothing. That is an enormous placebo response, and it means the genuine saffron effect, while real, is sitting on top of a very tall pile of 'I felt better just from being in a study.' Take the 72 percent at face value and you will overpay for red string.

Also worth saying out loud: the study was funded by the company that makes the extract, and several of the authors work there. That does not make the numbers fake. It does mean a sensible reader keeps one eyebrow up. (The nutrition researcher Marion Nestle kept both.)

The US Department of Defense's supplement-safety group puts it plainly. Across the literature, saffron extract at 20 to 100 mg for a few weeks could help depressive symptoms, with some trials rivaling antidepressants at fewer side effects, but the studies are small and the long-term evidence is thin. Their phrase for buying it on a hunch is 'a very expensive experiment.' Hard to argue.

How would it even work? The leading idea is that compounds called crocin and safranal nudge serotonin in a loosely SSRI-like way, with some anti-inflammatory and antioxidant tidying on the side. Idea is the operative word. The mechanism research is still mostly cells and rodents.

If you decide to try it

Clinical mood studies cluster around 30 mg a day of a standardized extract, not the pinch you stir into rice. Small doses are generally well tolerated. Large doses (think grams, not milligrams) bring nausea, dizziness, and headaches, and anyone pregnant should skip supplemental amounts entirely.

One catch unique to this spice: because it is so valuable, saffron is one of the most counterfeited products on the shelf. Cheap versions get cut with beetroot, dyed silk, safflower, paprika, even turmeric. If you are going to run the 'very expensive experiment,' run it on actual saffron.

That is the whole reason we carry professional-grade saffron and handle it the way we handle everything: sourced fresh per order, not aged on a shelf until the crocins quietly fade. It ships a little slower because we make it fresh. Potency holds up better that way, and with saffron you are either paying for potency or paying for red thread. The same thinking runs through our mood support and sleep shelves.

Saffron is not an antidepressant. It is a fairly well-studied, very photogenic, slightly oversold nudge. For a lot of merely blue days, a nudge is the entire job.

This article is for education only and is not medical advice. Talk with a qualified clinician before starting any supplement, especially if you are pregnant, taking antidepressants, or managing a diagnosed condition.

Sources

1. Lopresti et al., The Journal of Nutrition (2025): a saffron extract (Affron) on mood and wellbeing in adults experiencing low mood, a randomized controlled trial
2. NutraIngredients (2025): RCT supports saffron extract's mood improvements
3. Marion Nestle, Food Politics (2025): Industry-funded study of the week, saffron and mood
4. Operation Supplement Safety, US Department of Defense: Saffron in dietary supplements
5. Lopresti and Drummond, Human Psychopharmacology (2014): saffron for depression and its antidepressant mechanisms of action