December 23, 2014 • 29 mins
Spices are essentially chemical weapons. They protect a plant from animals and microbes. yet humans long ago learned to hack these defenses and use them to flavor their food. Join Robert and Julie for a discussion of spice and evolution.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your relationship with spice? I'm really sensitive to it? Yeah,
can you prefer sort of the blender taste, the blender
(00:26):
cuisine or no. I don't like bland cuisine. But I
can't take, like, you know, up the little the menus
with like the one mild chili pepper and two I
just feel like I'm so sensitive to it if I
can can't really go beyond that one mild pepper. I
like some spice, but but I agree there's there's a
limit for me because in my experience, just among the
(00:47):
people I know, they're there seem to be essentially three
types of individuals. So that the people who just are
really adverse to spices and just really don't want anything
messing with their their palate spice wise, and then they're
they're be like me who have a little adventurous with
the spice um. And then there are the the the individuals.
And I seem to think Jonathan Strickland are coworker is
(01:09):
one of these who will just go for the throat, like,
just show me something just really spicy. I want to
try the hottest spice imaginable. If you have a hot
sauce that is new and dangerous, let me try it out.
And um, yeah, I just can't go for that because
it just ends up tasting like pain. Well what I
noticed too, And maybe this is just something that my
(01:31):
my gingered husband, ginger headed husband does, like a redhead thing.
But he will break out in the sweats and he
gets really eu for it to he liked the spice
or loves it. Okay. See I've seen that before with
with people I know who are crazy into the spice.
They have this intense, bodily reaction to it, where so
(01:52):
you you're like, why do you love it so much?
Because you look like you were just maced? Yeah, exactly
or pepper spray? Right? Which is that gets down to?
And one of the key ideas that we're talking about
in this episode is that the spices are chemical weapons
that we've we've hijacked and manipulated and used for for
other purposes. Indeed, and spices have have really taken quite
(02:17):
the position, I guess you could say over the last
four hundred years, and we sort of take it for granted. Now,
if you want some nutmeg, you just take it out
of your cupboard, right and just spread it on your food.
But four centuries ago, the only nutmeg trees to be
found fringed Run Island in the Band of Sea, which
is now what we know of as Eastern Indonesia. And
(02:37):
the Dutch they so badly wanted to secure those nutmeg
trees that they killed off like a good amount of people,
just like genocide for these nutmeg trees. And we forget this,
we forget that this these the spice trade really shaped
empires and um some some are built and destroyed on spices.
(02:59):
It's amazing, Yeah, I mean it's it's kind of difficult
to overstate the importance of spices in in human history
and the establishment of trade routes. Uh and also just
in cultural identity of of of a place. You think
of any any particular part of the world us to
think about their cuisine, you end up thinking about their spices,
both indigenous spices and spices that ended up coming from
outside sources and ended up becoming a part of of
(03:22):
their identity. I mean, for instance, you look at the
at Thai cuisine, like they are elements of Thai cuisine
that that obviously we are are ingrained within the culture
prior to outside interference. But then there are there are
elements that that came through via the Portuguese and those
just become a part of the national culinary identity. And
that identity was something that we've been adding to over
(03:44):
and over again only because as hunter gatherers, as people
who could become agriculturally minded and really master fire, we
could begin to concentrate on how we would cooke our
food and how we would flavor are our food. You know,
I want to I do want to preface and say
that when it comes to understanding the history of of
(04:06):
humans and spice, UM, it's difficult to to develop a
you know, really definitive answers. It's one of those things
that's ultimately kind of lost to prehistory. We have some
of archaeological evidence that will get into UH, but but
there are a few different ways of looking at this now. UM,
if you travel back in time, though, you go back
around ten thousand years, you UH, and you go past
(04:27):
that point, you will find an age before the agricultural revolution.
To your point, this is a this is when we
were hunter gatherers. Right, as a Harold McGee points out
in on Food and Cooking, U we've benefited from a
quote unquote diverse yet chancey diet, so you never knew
what your next meal might consist of. It might be
dandelion leaves in a squirrel, it might be nuts and berries.
(04:49):
A lot of different stuff was coming in, but there
was there was no dependency there um. But then we
learned to grow, we learned to cultivate. We uh, we
settled down to an agrarian lifestyle in the same way
h that an unruly bachelor or bachelorette might, if the
spirit moved them, eventually settle into monogamous relationship. They trade
variety and adventure for dependability. So we turned to the
(05:13):
concentrated energy and protein of rice, sweet corn, and barley.
But just as it was dependable, it was also kind
of boring. Right. The flavors were few and predictable, but
we still had a nose and a sense of taste
that evolved for the wild and uh, for the hunting
and gathering. We had not changed into a different organism,
even though we had found a new way to obtain
(05:34):
these vital nutrients. Uh, but we didn't want to return
to that old lifestyle, right, I mean, we didn't want
to just become hunter gatherers again. But we wanted to
spice things up. We needed to provide stimulation. We wanted
to provide play in our food, and so herbs and
spices made that possible. We could make bland foods more
flavorable again even varied. And this is very much the
(05:55):
luxury of an agrarian society, right because if you have uh,
my food source that is predictable or fairly so, then
you have a little bit more leisure time on your hands,
or even just time to focus on what you're eating
and what it's tasting like, as opposed to just putting
something in your mouth. Yeah, it becomes less about and
(06:15):
I must find something today, be at squirrel or dandelion
and more like, well, it's going to be corn again,
because that's all there is right now. But but what
can I do to it? Could I perhaps add some
dandelion or squirrel to that corn and sweeten the deal?
So we don't have that that one piece of information
that says ah, and that is here's the year when
(06:36):
humans began using spices. Right, all we can do is
look at anthropology and try to in some some bits
of archaeology and try to piece together when humans began
to really use spices in earnest. Yeah, and you know,
some of the evidence so we're about to look at here, uh,
you know, shows that that maybe we were even using
(06:57):
spices to varying degrees before we settled down into that
agrarian lifestyle. Because obviously, if you're a hunter gather, you're
going around, you're trying different things, You're discovering maybe that
some things are rather difficult to to to consume on
their own, but if but if combined with another element, uh,
they might become a little more palatable. According to a
(07:17):
two thousand thirteen study published in the journal Plos One,
ancient European hunter gatherers were using garlic mustard seeds to
give their foods a peppery kick as far back as
six thousand years ago. University of York archaeologist Oliver Craig
and his team discovered microscop expects of plant based cilia
on fire scorched pottery shards collected from three camp sites
(07:39):
in north central Europe. Now, the evidence data back between
five thousand, eight hundred and six thousand, one hundred and
fifty years ago uh the garlic mustard plant also known
as jack by the hedge. This would have been a pungent,
peppery tasting black seed, but but it has no nutritional value.
So clearly this is something you would you would only
add if you wanted to toy with the flavor of
(08:02):
a thing. So in this particular study, the researchers argue
that their evidence quote suggests a much greater antiquity to
the spicing of foods than is evident in the macro
fossil record, and challenges the view that plants were exploited
by hunter gatherers and early agriculture solely for energy requirements
rather than for taste. That's worth noting that this was
(08:23):
a locally available spice, and it's uncertain if the practice
of using it is derived from contact with Old World farmers,
people who are already engaged in in the in the
agrarian lifestyle style in the New East, or they developed
it locally. So the bottom line here is that our
hunter gatherer ways paved the way for spice, We have
the nose for it, and in all likelihood are wandering
(08:44):
ways gave us all the knowledge we needed to ultimately
make that uh that BC spice pumpkin latte that we
all craved, what was the residue was found on the
proper right, Yes, Yeah, Now what's really important about that
is that the residue is found in the crockery there,
so that gives us a really good hints like, hey,
this was probably used in the actual cooking. Now. Dr
(09:08):
Hailey Saul, who led the study from the University of
York UM which looked at that crockery, said that there's
a cave in Israel where coriander has been found and
that's dated to around twenty three thousand years ago. But
you can't with certainty look at that coriander and say
it was used in cooking because there's no evidence to
support that it could have been used as some sort
(09:30):
of medicinal um material, or it could have been used
in cooking or for even decoration. Yeah, because central to
this is just the the idea that as we were
going around hunting and gathering, trying different things, discovering the
properties of different plants. Uh we we we ended up
cataloging them at least as part of our our oral history.
(09:52):
We knew what things you should not eat because they
would kill you. We learned what things were good eats,
and then we uh initially, and then we eventually learned
what things could be combined in small amounts to adjust
the flavor or perhaps uh service some sort of early medicine. Indeed,
and in the process we've kind of figured out what
(10:12):
exactly constitutes a spice in the first place. Indeed, yeah,
what are we talking about when we talk about a spice. Well,
spice is a culinary term. It's not a botanical category,
and it does not refer to a specific kind of
plant or plant part. Spices come from various woody shrubs
and vines, trees, roots, seeds, fruits, flowers, you name it.
(10:35):
Um cookbooks generally distinguished between seasonings. Those are spices used
in food preparation and condiments. Those are spices added after
food is served. But they cannot just differentiate between herbs
and spices. But when you get down to it, um
herbs are defined botanically as plants that they don't develop woody,
(10:55):
persistent tissue, and they're usually called in uh as a
as a fresh and greedy it, whereas spices are usually
dried in a little bottle, etcetera. Right, and spices are
unique in that they have a certain physical response to
the human body and when you eat them. There are
compounds and spicy foods that activate since ra neurons called
(11:16):
polymodal no susceptors, which are found all over the body
but also inside your mouth and your nose. So these
same receptors are activated by extreme heat. That's why if
you chomp down on, saye like a Scotch bonnet, your
brain screams fire right in your body follows suit, and
then you begin to sweat and your heart starts to
(11:37):
beat faster and faster. And in a sense, this is
that flight or flight reaction that we have heard so
much about. UM. That is what is so unique about
spices that it's got those compounds. Now, not all of
these spices are created equal, especially when you're looking at
different kinds of chili peppers. UM. The difference lies in
(11:57):
the type of compounds and the cat sasan Now, the
cap station and black pepper and chili pepper are made
up of larger, heavier molecules called alkhal amides, which mostly
stay in your mouth. But if you have something like mustard,
horse rush or what sabby. This is a good example.
Uh you those are smaller compounds and uh those are
(12:19):
called diosinates, and they can float up into the sinuses.
And that is why if you take like some sort
of wassaby encrusted, I know, a soy nut or something,
pop it in your mouth, just feels like your nose
is on fire. Oh yeah, I mean that's one of
the things I love about about sushi is when you
have some of the sabby with the sushi and then
(12:40):
you accidentally use a little too much and it comes
as a surprise and then because suddenly you it's up
in your sinuses and it almost just locks down your
system for a second, and maybe even for half a second,
you think, oh, I think I'm gonna die, uh something,
something bad has happened to my body. And then you
kind of come down for that the high of that spice.
(13:01):
And we'll talk a little bit more about the high
that spice in a moment, but we should mention the
Skullville scale. Probably have heard that before when you've looked
at tabasco sauces or competitions. This measures how much kapacation
content can be deluded before the heat can no longer
be detected by the human tongue. Um So green peppers
(13:21):
they get a zero units on the Skullville scale. Tabasco
sauce gets about twelve hundred hundred Scoville units, and two
of the hottest peppers Trinidad Maruga scorpion and Carolina reaper.
Does sound pretty intense, right, terrifying. They come in at
(13:43):
one point five million to two million scoville units. Now
that's half as potent as actual like pepper spray, which
is about three to four million. Well, hey, we're gonna
take a quick break and when we come back, we
will get into some more on the subject of spices,
including why plants produce spice. To begin with, all right,
(14:11):
we're back, so why do plants want to kill us? Well,
I mean, that's that's kind of the idea here. I mean,
it's the quote from Harold McGee that he he often
throws out is that flavorings are chemical weapons. But we've
we've learned to hijack them. We were talking about the
Scoville scale, and that's really key to all of this
because generally with spices, a little always goes a long way.
(14:33):
You try eating any kind of a raw spice or
or herb, and you generally find the flavor of it
extremely overpowering. You know, a reagano vanilla being nutmeg. Most
of this stuff, if you're just taking it straight up,
it's gonna be it's gonna be irritating, it's gonna be numbing,
it's going to make you physically ill. Because these are
(14:54):
defensive aspects of the plant. This is the plant trying
to tell other organisms and also um not only just
a plan eating organisms, but even you know bacteria saying
do not eat me. I am dangerous if you if
you if you bite of me, even if you smell
of me too much, it's going to hurt. But humans,
uh have learned over time that well, I can take
(15:17):
a little bit of the the harmful substance and if
I elude it, if I can, I can actually turn
it into a form that I can consume. So in
other words, for the plants, it's a kind of self
producing pesticide for itself to protect itself. And we large
organisms come along and we we rip off, cutch upon it,
(15:38):
use a little bit usually and uh, we're not going
to die from it, right. Yeah. Just to call back
to our episode of nutmeg. If you swallow about two
tablespoons of ground nuntain meg, and you most certainly should
not um, you could suffer hallucinations, nausea, heart palpitations, rapid heartbeat,
rushing blood, the feeling that you're going to die. At
(15:58):
least one death has been report did. And that's just nutmeg.
You can buy it off the shelf at the local store. Uh,
it's in your maybe in your cabinet right now. And
and this is kind of a case with it with
a with a number of spices. It's just about any spice.
If you take enough of it, you're going to get stick.
It's it's going to have a dire effect on your body,
which makes you wonder why do we consume these in
the first place? Right, I mean, indeed, you you sort
(16:20):
of put yourself in the head of the our ancient
hunter gatherer ancestors and try to imagine them, you know,
sampling a pepper for the first time and just you know,
falling over and gagging and then and instead of thinking
I'll never touch that again, they think, I bet I
could do something with that. You know, it's just the
the the early chemist, uh. In human civilization, who said,
(16:41):
there's there's something potent there, and maybe I can use
that potency to my advantage. Well, especially if you look
at food as a kind of medicine, right, because we
know here that it can have antimicrobial properties. This is
from John Broach writing for National Geographic. He says Paul Sherman,
her fessor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell You Never
(17:02):
See in Ithaca, New York, says that his research shows
that people in warmer regions of the world benefit from
eating spicier foods because spices are natural anti microbials. So
you have more food borne pathogens and parasites in warmer climates.
So in this sense, spices can kill or inhibit their growth. Yeah.
(17:24):
I mean, the basic idea here is you're in a
you're in this hotter climate, there's a there's a richer
microbial world trying to kill you potentially, and so you
have taken the chemical weapons of a plant and are
using that to defend your food from those attackers. Yeah.
John Rich says that when people in a country like Thailand,
for instance, eat a spicy meal, they are much less
(17:46):
likely to spend the next day with about of diarrhea
than people in that region who eat bland foods, so
there's definitely an advantage to eating the spicier foods. And
for Paul Sherman's part, to prove his hypothesis about the
climate dependent evolution of spicy foods, he and his colleagues
compared recipes for more than four thousand meat dishes and
one thousand vegetarian dishes among thirties six countries. As predicted,
(18:11):
countries with the warmest climates have the spiciest food and
particularly with those meat dishes, you see uh much more
higher levels of spice being used in those. Yeah, I mean,
I instantly think of Thai cooking because with with Thai cooking,
obviously you have a hot environment, you have a lot
of spices thrown into the meat. And additionally, the meat
is cooked at generally at a really high temperature to
(18:32):
boot um, which is you know, one of the reasons
that it's often advised that you're you're generally okay with
with any kind of street food in Thailand if you
you know, if you see it cooked before you because
the temperature is high, and then you have the spices
in there as well. Yeah, again, you've got meat and
a hot climate, which equals more pathogens, more parasites, So
pour on the spices. Yeah, if you look at all
this from a Darwinian standpoint, you can see how that
(18:56):
kind of culinary tradition, those who hold that up, those
are going to be the survivors. Right. So that's kind
of the evolutionary model here. Those who enjoyed the spice,
those who enjoy the style of cooking, those are the
people that survived in these in these environments. Now that's
not to say there are not alternative hypotheses to consider. Um.
One alternative hypothesis is, uh, is is that simply hot climates,
(19:19):
you see a preference for spicy foods because these increase
perspiration and help cool the body. And we already know that, right,
your body is interpreting this as heat. Right, So again
think to our think to that to your husband, to
anybody you know who's who's into too eating the spicy
food and then sweating profusely. Uh. The sweat is of
course cooling their body. So you could argue that when
(19:42):
they when they when they have something really spicy, they're
simply tinkering with their bodies cooling system. Another idea here,
another hypothesis is that spices uh merely signify wealth and
social status. And this gets into against one of what
we discussed about the way that spices have influenced world
politics and and certainly the trade around the world. Uh.
(20:06):
Spices become uh something of a of a of a
status symbol, something of a of a luxury, and therefore,
having a lot of spices at your disposal, being able
to eat well spiced food is simply living the highlight.
I think it indicates skill level too. Oh indeed, yeah, yeah,
you could easily see that being something that plays into
mate selection, right another chefs out they're just nodding your head. Yeah, yeah.
(20:33):
And I say that as someone who screwed up making
macaroni and cheese over the weekend. Yeah, I accidentally put
the cheese and the and the milk into the boiling
water with the noodles. Was quite embarrassing. You were just
distracted that it was just me and the boy and
the cat, and the boy and the cat were both
in the kitchen with me trying to tell me things
(20:53):
at the same time. But you know, I just ended up.
It just ended up being buttered noodles, and the child
loved it so and as we have already mentioned before
in our research that cats can mimic that kind of
um infant like cry, like they can gain that. So
when you hear your your cat whining for food, and
my cat does it all the time, it just puts
(21:13):
me on needles, especially when my kid is yeah, going
at me. So here you okay. Well, another alternate hypothesis
to consider is it the health benefits of spice a
digestion modulate energy, metabolism and even help postpone some degenerative diseases.
(21:34):
And UH, indeed, there are a number of examples we
can call out to. UH, They've just been countless studies
over the years and continue to be more and more
studies about different spices what their health benefits happened to be.
And we're certainly not going to go through all of those. Uh.
If you go back to our nutmeg episode, we discussed
nutmaga bit. But just to highlight a couple here, vanilla,
(21:54):
UH has There's been numerous studies that have demonstrated that
vanilla in the major component of vanilla as anti carcinogenic
properties UM. In studies at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, a
vanilla derived drug on mice was able to significantly reduce
the percentage of sickled cells h and human studies are
(22:15):
apparently in the work on that. If you look to
black pepper, just straight up black pepper well. UM. In
a study in the Journal of the American College and Nutrition,
gastro intellol interologists found that one point five gramds of
black pepper uh sped up the time it takes for
food to move all the way through the g I tract.
And in animal studies on lung cancer, pepperin changed the
(22:37):
level of several enzymes producing an anti tumor effect. Black
pepper extracts added to the diet of mice with breast
cancer increased lifespan by six I I could go on
even just about pepper. There are so many studies about
itself with benefits and now that's all. That's all great,
and well what about those people who seem to be
seeking it out? And I'm not talking about people on
(22:58):
warmer climates. I'm talking about say, some some guy or
gal in Norway, right, which you would have less pathogens,
right and less rotting food. Um, you're talking about a
guy in the dead of winter who goes to the
Let's see both of them. Yeah, let's do both. Guy
and a gal that go to, uh, say, a Tie
(23:18):
or a Mexican restaurant in the dead of winter, and
they say, give it to me, give me the spiciest
you can do. Make it Tie spicy, make it Mexican spicy.
They're like Trinidad, Trinidad, Maruga, Scorpion place. Yes, I challenge
you to to hurt me with your food. Yeah, I
want the Carolina Reaper, and I want it now. Researchers
(23:39):
at Pennsi University, Uh they investigated the link between personality
traits and affinity for spicy food, and they found that
sensation seekers, or people who enjoy the thrills of roller coasters, gambling,
and meeting new people, were generally more enthusiastic about spicier dishes.
And we have talked about that novel teaching for Yeah,
(24:00):
I mean you tend to associate really spicy food with
adventurous eating, with going outside of your your, your, your,
your comfort zone, even to try something new, something spicy,
which would tie into the rewards system of the brain. Right, um, now,
I don't I feel like this isn't as clear cut
as junk food or you know, salt or fat things
(24:22):
that we eat, sometimes in junk food, that make our
brain go ding ding ding. Um. That being said, there
is a euphoric sense that a person gets, so it
would make sense that if they ate something that was
really hot, they might really say, play off of that feeling.
And in a series of experiments, Sung Gon Kim, who
is a psychiatry professor from Busan National University in South Korea,
(24:46):
found what might be a possible link between spicy food
and alcohol, because again both of them will stimulate the
brain's reward systems, and he found Professor Can found that
not only are people who are dependent on alcohol more
likely to enjoy eating spicy food, but that medication to
treat alcohol problems is more effective in people who prefer spice.
(25:09):
So what he did is um he gave two groups
of drinkers a drug called nail truck Zone, which blocks
the opioid reward system, and he found it was affected
effective in the people who preferred spicy food, but not
in the other group. Now, again this is just one study,
but it's it's interesting to try to look at why
some people really do go after that spice so voraciously. Yeah,
(25:33):
and they do go after it with a passion that
is often just perplexing to anyone who doesn't share that
that love of the spice. Now, there's another alternate hypothesis here,
and it's kind of a boring one because this one
would be that there's no benefit the idea that patterns
of spice use arise because people just like to take
advantage of whatever, uh you know, sweet or cool smelling
(25:57):
plants are available to improve the the taste of their food.
I think it kind of falls in that column of
benign violation theory. We've talked about this in terms of humor,
like why are some things funny because they're they're just
threatening enough to be edgy, but they are benign. There's
really no actual threat there. Yeah, I mean I can
(26:18):
definitely get that again, just thinking back to the wasabi
punch you can get when you when you're having sushi,
because it I never actually feel like I'm going to die,
but it sets off, it sets off all the alarms
in my body for just a second, and then there's
that before it come down from from from the spice
I survived come down. Yeah. Yeah, So it's kind of yeah,
(26:41):
I can see see that that hypothesis ringing true. Now,
of course, in all likelihood, Um, we're talking about a
combination of multiple factors in in terms of human use
of spices. Uh. We craved the flavor, and the flavor
brought with it health benefits. And and where those health
benefits providers a Bible advantage, spice culture flourished. Um, and
(27:03):
so we we end up in this rich and spiced
age that we live in today. I mean, really an
unprecedented availability of spice in our lives. Yeah, I remember
that next time you reach for nutmeg. Yeah, indeed years ago,
not so easy, you know. Interesting fact, after we did
our nutmeg episode, I have put nutmeg on my smoothie
(27:24):
every morning ever since. Well maybe this movie not interesting
to It's kind of a boring story actually, but but
just just an example of how a podcast changed my
life in a very small way. Well, there you go.
And I was just thinking about this little factory the
other day. You know. Jamie Oliver, the chef, Yes, he
admitted that he uh, because he could not exact corporal
(27:47):
punishment upon his teenager after she was really sassy to
him that she cut up an apple for her and
then rubbed it with Scotch bonnet. So he couldn't do
anything to her except use chemical weapons against her. Yes,
And I thought, yeah, indeed it can be a weapon.
What's your what's your favorite spice? What's what's one of
one of your because we can't just say, oh, I
(28:09):
only like this one, but but what comes to mind
and spice you really like to use or really like
clove and cinnamon like I'm I guess I am more
of a mild I'm not. I guess I'm more of
a warm Yeah. Yeah, okay the German for someone who
just wants to take a warm shower, never a hot
or cold one. Is that one of those words that
only exist in German but not any Yeah, I really
(28:33):
like paprika. I mean, I like a lot of different spices,
but I and I don't cook a lot, but when
I do cook, I often do like veggie baked things
where you just you know, chop up a bunch of veggies,
sweet potatoes and what have you and toss them with
some oil and salt and pepper, and then I thrown
a little paprika, and uh, I love that. That sounds delicious.
All right, So there you have it. Um. I'm sure
(28:53):
everyone has some feedback on spices. If there's anyone out
there who doesn't like spices at all, I would I
would love to hear. Why would love a good explanation
on that point. Uh, you're not in trouble, but we
would like more, just more insight on on how how
your your brain and your body works. Um as always
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(29:15):
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(29:37):
Full of the Mind at house to works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your relationship with spice? I'm really sensitive to it? Yeah,
can you prefer sort of the blender taste, the blender
(00:26):
cuisine or no. I don't like bland cuisine. But I
can't take, like, you know, up the little the menus
with like the one mild chili pepper and two I
just feel like I'm so sensitive to it if I
can can't really go beyond that one mild pepper. I
like some spice, but but I agree there's there's a
limit for me because in my experience, just among the
(00:47):
people I know, they're there seem to be essentially three
types of individuals. So that the people who just are
really adverse to spices and just really don't want anything
messing with their their palate spice wise, and then they're
they're be like me who have a little adventurous with
the spice um. And then there are the the the individuals.
And I seem to think Jonathan Strickland are coworker is
(01:09):
one of these who will just go for the throat, like,
just show me something just really spicy. I want to
try the hottest spice imaginable. If you have a hot
sauce that is new and dangerous, let me try it out.
And um, yeah, I just can't go for that because
it just ends up tasting like pain. Well what I
noticed too, And maybe this is just something that my
(01:31):
my gingered husband, ginger headed husband does, like a redhead thing.
But he will break out in the sweats and he
gets really eu for it to he liked the spice
or loves it. Okay. See I've seen that before with
with people I know who are crazy into the spice.
They have this intense, bodily reaction to it, where so
(01:52):
you you're like, why do you love it so much?
Because you look like you were just maced? Yeah, exactly
or pepper spray? Right? Which is that gets down to?
And one of the key ideas that we're talking about
in this episode is that the spices are chemical weapons
that we've we've hijacked and manipulated and used for for
other purposes. Indeed, and spices have have really taken quite
(02:17):
the position, I guess you could say over the last
four hundred years, and we sort of take it for granted. Now,
if you want some nutmeg, you just take it out
of your cupboard, right and just spread it on your food.
But four centuries ago, the only nutmeg trees to be
found fringed Run Island in the Band of Sea, which
is now what we know of as Eastern Indonesia. And
(02:37):
the Dutch they so badly wanted to secure those nutmeg
trees that they killed off like a good amount of people,
just like genocide for these nutmeg trees. And we forget this,
we forget that this these the spice trade really shaped
empires and um some some are built and destroyed on spices.
(02:59):
It's amazing, Yeah, I mean it's it's kind of difficult
to overstate the importance of spices in in human history
and the establishment of trade routes. Uh and also just
in cultural identity of of of a place. You think
of any any particular part of the world us to
think about their cuisine, you end up thinking about their spices,
both indigenous spices and spices that ended up coming from
outside sources and ended up becoming a part of of
(03:22):
their identity. I mean, for instance, you look at the
at Thai cuisine, like they are elements of Thai cuisine
that that obviously we are are ingrained within the culture
prior to outside interference. But then there are there are
elements that that came through via the Portuguese and those
just become a part of the national culinary identity. And
that identity was something that we've been adding to over
(03:44):
and over again only because as hunter gatherers, as people
who could become agriculturally minded and really master fire, we
could begin to concentrate on how we would cooke our
food and how we would flavor are our food. You know,
I want to I do want to preface and say
that when it comes to understanding the history of of
(04:06):
humans and spice, UM, it's difficult to to develop a
you know, really definitive answers. It's one of those things
that's ultimately kind of lost to prehistory. We have some
of archaeological evidence that will get into UH, but but
there are a few different ways of looking at this now. UM,
if you travel back in time, though, you go back
around ten thousand years, you UH, and you go past
(04:27):
that point, you will find an age before the agricultural revolution.
To your point, this is a this is when we
were hunter gatherers. Right, as a Harold McGee points out
in on Food and Cooking, U we've benefited from a
quote unquote diverse yet chancey diet, so you never knew
what your next meal might consist of. It might be
dandelion leaves in a squirrel, it might be nuts and berries.
(04:49):
A lot of different stuff was coming in, but there
was there was no dependency there um. But then we
learned to grow, we learned to cultivate. We uh, we
settled down to an agrarian lifestyle in the same way
h that an unruly bachelor or bachelorette might, if the
spirit moved them, eventually settle into monogamous relationship. They trade
variety and adventure for dependability. So we turned to the
(05:13):
concentrated energy and protein of rice, sweet corn, and barley.
But just as it was dependable, it was also kind
of boring. Right. The flavors were few and predictable, but
we still had a nose and a sense of taste
that evolved for the wild and uh, for the hunting
and gathering. We had not changed into a different organism,
even though we had found a new way to obtain
(05:34):
these vital nutrients. Uh, but we didn't want to return
to that old lifestyle, right, I mean, we didn't want
to just become hunter gatherers again. But we wanted to
spice things up. We needed to provide stimulation. We wanted
to provide play in our food, and so herbs and
spices made that possible. We could make bland foods more
flavorable again even varied. And this is very much the
(05:55):
luxury of an agrarian society, right because if you have uh,
my food source that is predictable or fairly so, then
you have a little bit more leisure time on your hands,
or even just time to focus on what you're eating
and what it's tasting like, as opposed to just putting
something in your mouth. Yeah, it becomes less about and
(06:15):
I must find something today, be at squirrel or dandelion
and more like, well, it's going to be corn again,
because that's all there is right now. But but what
can I do to it? Could I perhaps add some
dandelion or squirrel to that corn and sweeten the deal?
So we don't have that that one piece of information
that says ah, and that is here's the year when
(06:36):
humans began using spices. Right, all we can do is
look at anthropology and try to in some some bits
of archaeology and try to piece together when humans began
to really use spices in earnest. Yeah, and you know,
some of the evidence so we're about to look at here, uh,
you know, shows that that maybe we were even using
(06:57):
spices to varying degrees before we settled down into that
agrarian lifestyle. Because obviously, if you're a hunter gather, you're
going around, you're trying different things, You're discovering maybe that
some things are rather difficult to to to consume on
their own, but if but if combined with another element, uh,
they might become a little more palatable. According to a
(07:17):
two thousand thirteen study published in the journal Plos One,
ancient European hunter gatherers were using garlic mustard seeds to
give their foods a peppery kick as far back as
six thousand years ago. University of York archaeologist Oliver Craig
and his team discovered microscop expects of plant based cilia
on fire scorched pottery shards collected from three camp sites
(07:39):
in north central Europe. Now, the evidence data back between
five thousand, eight hundred and six thousand, one hundred and
fifty years ago uh the garlic mustard plant also known
as jack by the hedge. This would have been a pungent,
peppery tasting black seed, but but it has no nutritional value.
So clearly this is something you would you would only
add if you wanted to toy with the flavor of
(08:02):
a thing. So in this particular study, the researchers argue
that their evidence quote suggests a much greater antiquity to
the spicing of foods than is evident in the macro
fossil record, and challenges the view that plants were exploited
by hunter gatherers and early agriculture solely for energy requirements
rather than for taste. That's worth noting that this was
(08:23):
a locally available spice, and it's uncertain if the practice
of using it is derived from contact with Old World farmers,
people who are already engaged in in the in the
agrarian lifestyle style in the New East, or they developed
it locally. So the bottom line here is that our
hunter gatherer ways paved the way for spice, We have
the nose for it, and in all likelihood are wandering
(08:44):
ways gave us all the knowledge we needed to ultimately
make that uh that BC spice pumpkin latte that we
all craved, what was the residue was found on the
proper right, Yes, Yeah, Now what's really important about that
is that the residue is found in the crockery there,
so that gives us a really good hints like, hey,
this was probably used in the actual cooking. Now. Dr
(09:08):
Hailey Saul, who led the study from the University of
York UM which looked at that crockery, said that there's
a cave in Israel where coriander has been found and
that's dated to around twenty three thousand years ago. But
you can't with certainty look at that coriander and say
it was used in cooking because there's no evidence to
support that it could have been used as some sort
(09:30):
of medicinal um material, or it could have been used
in cooking or for even decoration. Yeah, because central to
this is just the the idea that as we were
going around hunting and gathering, trying different things, discovering the
properties of different plants. Uh we we we ended up
cataloging them at least as part of our our oral history.
(09:52):
We knew what things you should not eat because they
would kill you. We learned what things were good eats,
and then we uh initially, and then we eventually learned
what things could be combined in small amounts to adjust
the flavor or perhaps uh service some sort of early medicine. Indeed,
and in the process we've kind of figured out what
(10:12):
exactly constitutes a spice in the first place. Indeed, yeah,
what are we talking about when we talk about a spice. Well,
spice is a culinary term. It's not a botanical category,
and it does not refer to a specific kind of
plant or plant part. Spices come from various woody shrubs
and vines, trees, roots, seeds, fruits, flowers, you name it.
(10:35):
Um cookbooks generally distinguished between seasonings. Those are spices used
in food preparation and condiments. Those are spices added after
food is served. But they cannot just differentiate between herbs
and spices. But when you get down to it, um
herbs are defined botanically as plants that they don't develop woody,
(10:55):
persistent tissue, and they're usually called in uh as a
as a fresh and greedy it, whereas spices are usually
dried in a little bottle, etcetera. Right, and spices are
unique in that they have a certain physical response to
the human body and when you eat them. There are
compounds and spicy foods that activate since ra neurons called
(11:16):
polymodal no susceptors, which are found all over the body
but also inside your mouth and your nose. So these
same receptors are activated by extreme heat. That's why if
you chomp down on, saye like a Scotch bonnet, your
brain screams fire right in your body follows suit, and
then you begin to sweat and your heart starts to
(11:37):
beat faster and faster. And in a sense, this is
that flight or flight reaction that we have heard so
much about. UM. That is what is so unique about
spices that it's got those compounds. Now, not all of
these spices are created equal, especially when you're looking at
different kinds of chili peppers. UM. The difference lies in
(11:57):
the type of compounds and the cat sasan Now, the
cap station and black pepper and chili pepper are made
up of larger, heavier molecules called alkhal amides, which mostly
stay in your mouth. But if you have something like mustard,
horse rush or what sabby. This is a good example.
Uh you those are smaller compounds and uh those are
(12:19):
called diosinates, and they can float up into the sinuses.
And that is why if you take like some sort
of wassaby encrusted, I know, a soy nut or something,
pop it in your mouth, just feels like your nose
is on fire. Oh yeah, I mean that's one of
the things I love about about sushi is when you
have some of the sabby with the sushi and then
(12:40):
you accidentally use a little too much and it comes
as a surprise and then because suddenly you it's up
in your sinuses and it almost just locks down your
system for a second, and maybe even for half a second,
you think, oh, I think I'm gonna die, uh something,
something bad has happened to my body. And then you
kind of come down for that the high of that spice.
(13:01):
And we'll talk a little bit more about the high
that spice in a moment, but we should mention the
Skullville scale. Probably have heard that before when you've looked
at tabasco sauces or competitions. This measures how much kapacation
content can be deluded before the heat can no longer
be detected by the human tongue. Um So green peppers
(13:21):
they get a zero units on the Skullville scale. Tabasco
sauce gets about twelve hundred hundred Scoville units, and two
of the hottest peppers Trinidad Maruga scorpion and Carolina reaper.
Does sound pretty intense, right, terrifying. They come in at
(13:43):
one point five million to two million scoville units. Now
that's half as potent as actual like pepper spray, which
is about three to four million. Well, hey, we're gonna
take a quick break and when we come back, we
will get into some more on the subject of spices,
including why plants produce spice. To begin with, all right,
(14:11):
we're back, so why do plants want to kill us? Well,
I mean, that's that's kind of the idea here. I mean,
it's the quote from Harold McGee that he he often
throws out is that flavorings are chemical weapons. But we've
we've learned to hijack them. We were talking about the
Scoville scale, and that's really key to all of this
because generally with spices, a little always goes a long way.
(14:33):
You try eating any kind of a raw spice or
or herb, and you generally find the flavor of it
extremely overpowering. You know, a reagano vanilla being nutmeg. Most
of this stuff, if you're just taking it straight up,
it's gonna be it's gonna be irritating, it's gonna be numbing,
it's going to make you physically ill. Because these are
(14:54):
defensive aspects of the plant. This is the plant trying
to tell other organisms and also um not only just
a plan eating organisms, but even you know bacteria saying
do not eat me. I am dangerous if you if
you if you bite of me, even if you smell
of me too much, it's going to hurt. But humans,
uh have learned over time that well, I can take
(15:17):
a little bit of the the harmful substance and if
I elude it, if I can, I can actually turn
it into a form that I can consume. So in
other words, for the plants, it's a kind of self
producing pesticide for itself to protect itself. And we large
organisms come along and we we rip off, cutch upon it,
(15:38):
use a little bit usually and uh, we're not going
to die from it, right. Yeah. Just to call back
to our episode of nutmeg. If you swallow about two
tablespoons of ground nuntain meg, and you most certainly should
not um, you could suffer hallucinations, nausea, heart palpitations, rapid heartbeat,
rushing blood, the feeling that you're going to die. At
(15:58):
least one death has been report did. And that's just nutmeg.
You can buy it off the shelf at the local store. Uh,
it's in your maybe in your cabinet right now. And
and this is kind of a case with it with
a with a number of spices. It's just about any spice.
If you take enough of it, you're going to get stick.
It's it's going to have a dire effect on your body,
which makes you wonder why do we consume these in
the first place? Right, I mean, indeed, you you sort
(16:20):
of put yourself in the head of the our ancient
hunter gatherer ancestors and try to imagine them, you know,
sampling a pepper for the first time and just you know,
falling over and gagging and then and instead of thinking
I'll never touch that again, they think, I bet I
could do something with that. You know, it's just the
the the early chemist, uh. In human civilization, who said,
(16:41):
there's there's something potent there, and maybe I can use
that potency to my advantage. Well, especially if you look
at food as a kind of medicine, right, because we
know here that it can have antimicrobial properties. This is
from John Broach writing for National Geographic. He says Paul Sherman,
her fessor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell You Never
(17:02):
See in Ithaca, New York, says that his research shows
that people in warmer regions of the world benefit from
eating spicier foods because spices are natural anti microbials. So
you have more food borne pathogens and parasites in warmer climates.
So in this sense, spices can kill or inhibit their growth. Yeah.
(17:24):
I mean, the basic idea here is you're in a
you're in this hotter climate, there's a there's a richer
microbial world trying to kill you potentially, and so you
have taken the chemical weapons of a plant and are
using that to defend your food from those attackers. Yeah.
John Rich says that when people in a country like Thailand,
for instance, eat a spicy meal, they are much less
(17:46):
likely to spend the next day with about of diarrhea
than people in that region who eat bland foods, so
there's definitely an advantage to eating the spicier foods. And
for Paul Sherman's part, to prove his hypothesis about the
climate dependent evolution of spicy foods, he and his colleagues
compared recipes for more than four thousand meat dishes and
one thousand vegetarian dishes among thirties six countries. As predicted,
(18:11):
countries with the warmest climates have the spiciest food and
particularly with those meat dishes, you see uh much more
higher levels of spice being used in those. Yeah, I mean,
I instantly think of Thai cooking because with with Thai cooking,
obviously you have a hot environment, you have a lot
of spices thrown into the meat. And additionally, the meat
is cooked at generally at a really high temperature to
(18:32):
boot um, which is you know, one of the reasons
that it's often advised that you're you're generally okay with
with any kind of street food in Thailand if you
you know, if you see it cooked before you because
the temperature is high, and then you have the spices
in there as well. Yeah, again, you've got meat and
a hot climate, which equals more pathogens, more parasites, So
pour on the spices. Yeah, if you look at all
this from a Darwinian standpoint, you can see how that
(18:56):
kind of culinary tradition, those who hold that up, those
are going to be the survivors. Right. So that's kind
of the evolutionary model here. Those who enjoyed the spice,
those who enjoy the style of cooking, those are the
people that survived in these in these environments. Now that's
not to say there are not alternative hypotheses to consider. Um.
One alternative hypothesis is, uh, is is that simply hot climates,
(19:19):
you see a preference for spicy foods because these increase
perspiration and help cool the body. And we already know that, right,
your body is interpreting this as heat. Right, So again
think to our think to that to your husband, to
anybody you know who's who's into too eating the spicy
food and then sweating profusely. Uh. The sweat is of
course cooling their body. So you could argue that when
(19:42):
they when they when they have something really spicy, they're
simply tinkering with their bodies cooling system. Another idea here,
another hypothesis is that spices uh merely signify wealth and
social status. And this gets into against one of what
we discussed about the way that spices have influenced world
politics and and certainly the trade around the world. Uh.
(20:06):
Spices become uh something of a of a of a
status symbol, something of a of a luxury, and therefore,
having a lot of spices at your disposal, being able
to eat well spiced food is simply living the highlight.
I think it indicates skill level too. Oh indeed, yeah, yeah,
you could easily see that being something that plays into
mate selection, right another chefs out they're just nodding your head. Yeah, yeah.
(20:33):
And I say that as someone who screwed up making
macaroni and cheese over the weekend. Yeah, I accidentally put
the cheese and the and the milk into the boiling
water with the noodles. Was quite embarrassing. You were just
distracted that it was just me and the boy and
the cat, and the boy and the cat were both
in the kitchen with me trying to tell me things
(20:53):
at the same time. But you know, I just ended up.
It just ended up being buttered noodles, and the child
loved it so and as we have already mentioned before
in our research that cats can mimic that kind of
um infant like cry, like they can gain that. So
when you hear your your cat whining for food, and
my cat does it all the time, it just puts
(21:13):
me on needles, especially when my kid is yeah, going
at me. So here you okay. Well, another alternate hypothesis
to consider is it the health benefits of spice a
digestion modulate energy, metabolism and even help postpone some degenerative diseases.
(21:34):
And UH, indeed, there are a number of examples we
can call out to. UH, They've just been countless studies
over the years and continue to be more and more
studies about different spices what their health benefits happened to be.
And we're certainly not going to go through all of those. Uh.
If you go back to our nutmeg episode, we discussed
nutmaga bit. But just to highlight a couple here, vanilla,
(21:54):
UH has There's been numerous studies that have demonstrated that
vanilla in the major component of vanilla as anti carcinogenic
properties UM. In studies at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, a
vanilla derived drug on mice was able to significantly reduce
the percentage of sickled cells h and human studies are
(22:15):
apparently in the work on that. If you look to
black pepper, just straight up black pepper well. UM. In
a study in the Journal of the American College and Nutrition,
gastro intellol interologists found that one point five gramds of
black pepper uh sped up the time it takes for
food to move all the way through the g I tract.
And in animal studies on lung cancer, pepperin changed the
(22:37):
level of several enzymes producing an anti tumor effect. Black
pepper extracts added to the diet of mice with breast
cancer increased lifespan by six I I could go on
even just about pepper. There are so many studies about
itself with benefits and now that's all. That's all great,
and well what about those people who seem to be
seeking it out? And I'm not talking about people on
(22:58):
warmer climates. I'm talking about say, some some guy or
gal in Norway, right, which you would have less pathogens,
right and less rotting food. Um, you're talking about a
guy in the dead of winter who goes to the
Let's see both of them. Yeah, let's do both. Guy
and a gal that go to, uh, say, a Tie
(23:18):
or a Mexican restaurant in the dead of winter, and
they say, give it to me, give me the spiciest
you can do. Make it Tie spicy, make it Mexican spicy.
They're like Trinidad, Trinidad, Maruga, Scorpion place. Yes, I challenge
you to to hurt me with your food. Yeah, I
want the Carolina Reaper, and I want it now. Researchers
(23:39):
at Pennsi University, Uh they investigated the link between personality
traits and affinity for spicy food, and they found that
sensation seekers, or people who enjoy the thrills of roller coasters, gambling,
and meeting new people, were generally more enthusiastic about spicier dishes.
And we have talked about that novel teaching for Yeah,
(24:00):
I mean you tend to associate really spicy food with
adventurous eating, with going outside of your your, your, your,
your comfort zone, even to try something new, something spicy,
which would tie into the rewards system of the brain. Right, um, now,
I don't I feel like this isn't as clear cut
as junk food or you know, salt or fat things
(24:22):
that we eat, sometimes in junk food, that make our
brain go ding ding ding. Um. That being said, there
is a euphoric sense that a person gets, so it
would make sense that if they ate something that was
really hot, they might really say, play off of that feeling.
And in a series of experiments, Sung Gon Kim, who
is a psychiatry professor from Busan National University in South Korea,
(24:46):
found what might be a possible link between spicy food
and alcohol, because again both of them will stimulate the
brain's reward systems, and he found Professor Can found that
not only are people who are dependent on alcohol more
likely to enjoy eating spicy food, but that medication to
treat alcohol problems is more effective in people who prefer spice.
(25:09):
So what he did is um he gave two groups
of drinkers a drug called nail truck Zone, which blocks
the opioid reward system, and he found it was affected
effective in the people who preferred spicy food, but not
in the other group. Now, again this is just one study,
but it's it's interesting to try to look at why
some people really do go after that spice so voraciously. Yeah,
(25:33):
and they do go after it with a passion that
is often just perplexing to anyone who doesn't share that
that love of the spice. Now, there's another alternate hypothesis here,
and it's kind of a boring one because this one
would be that there's no benefit the idea that patterns
of spice use arise because people just like to take
advantage of whatever, uh you know, sweet or cool smelling
(25:57):
plants are available to improve the the taste of their food.
I think it kind of falls in that column of
benign violation theory. We've talked about this in terms of humor,
like why are some things funny because they're they're just
threatening enough to be edgy, but they are benign. There's
really no actual threat there. Yeah, I mean I can
(26:18):
definitely get that again, just thinking back to the wasabi
punch you can get when you when you're having sushi,
because it I never actually feel like I'm going to die,
but it sets off, it sets off all the alarms
in my body for just a second, and then there's
that before it come down from from from the spice
I survived come down. Yeah. Yeah, So it's kind of yeah,
(26:41):
I can see see that that hypothesis ringing true. Now,
of course, in all likelihood, Um, we're talking about a
combination of multiple factors in in terms of human use
of spices. Uh. We craved the flavor, and the flavor
brought with it health benefits. And and where those health
benefits providers a Bible advantage, spice culture flourished. Um, and
(27:03):
so we we end up in this rich and spiced
age that we live in today. I mean, really an
unprecedented availability of spice in our lives. Yeah, I remember
that next time you reach for nutmeg. Yeah, indeed years ago,
not so easy, you know. Interesting fact, after we did
our nutmeg episode, I have put nutmeg on my smoothie
(27:24):
every morning ever since. Well maybe this movie not interesting
to It's kind of a boring story actually, but but
just just an example of how a podcast changed my
life in a very small way. Well, there you go.
And I was just thinking about this little factory the
other day. You know. Jamie Oliver, the chef, Yes, he
admitted that he uh, because he could not exact corporal
(27:47):
punishment upon his teenager after she was really sassy to
him that she cut up an apple for her and
then rubbed it with Scotch bonnet. So he couldn't do
anything to her except use chemical weapons against her. Yes,
And I thought, yeah, indeed it can be a weapon.
What's your what's your favorite spice? What's what's one of
one of your because we can't just say, oh, I
(28:09):
only like this one, but but what comes to mind
and spice you really like to use or really like
clove and cinnamon like I'm I guess I am more
of a mild I'm not. I guess I'm more of
a warm Yeah. Yeah, okay the German for someone who
just wants to take a warm shower, never a hot
or cold one. Is that one of those words that
only exist in German but not any Yeah, I really
(28:33):
like paprika. I mean, I like a lot of different spices,
but I and I don't cook a lot, but when
I do cook, I often do like veggie baked things
where you just you know, chop up a bunch of veggies,
sweet potatoes and what have you and toss them with
some oil and salt and pepper, and then I thrown
a little paprika, and uh, I love that. That sounds delicious.
All right, So there you have it. Um. I'm sure
(28:53):
everyone has some feedback on spices. If there's anyone out
there who doesn't like spices at all, I would I
would love to hear. Why would love a good explanation
on that point. Uh, you're not in trouble, but we
would like more, just more insight on on how how
your your brain and your body works. Um as always
check out more podcast episodes, more blog posts, um more videos,
(29:15):
links to social media on our web page That's Stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh, check out the
landing page. Therefore, this episode will include links to other
episodes we've done, such as that nutmag episode we mentioned,
as well as some links out to some some resources
outside our website you might find interesting. And if you
have any thoughts on this episode or any others, you
can always drop us a line by emailing us at
(29:37):
Full of the Mind at house to works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how Stuff Works dot com
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