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Darwinian Gastronomy: Why We Use Spices (1999)
- bretbernhoft 4y agoThis is a thought I just finished having. Right alongside a bowl of canned soup, that (with the help of spices) turned out to be a five star meal. Food is medicine, as it is said.
- gt565k 4y agoI always put black pepper and cayenne pepper in my soups. Warms me up and is healthy.
- heyitsguay 4y agoAnd a touch of garlic powder!
- senectus1 4y agoNot for FODMAP sensitive people.
- cm2187 4y agoAnd so does nutella and peanut butter.
- cwkoss 4y agoHmm. I wish this analysis accounted for availability of spices in different regions: I would expect onions and garlic to be more prevalent in Scandanavian dishes than cinnamon and ginger simply because those are easier to grow in temperate climates. Would be interesting to look at which spices have 'broken into' a cuisine despite being not agriculturally viable in that region. How does this set of spices differ from the broader set? More antimicrobial?
- Xylakant 4y agoWhen extrapolating from modern cuisine, or even what we consider “traditional local cuisine”, you need to take into account that most of this is quite new. Germans famed love for potatoes? Only a few generations old. So spices that became “traditional” may well have been brought in by traders, of which Scandinavia had plenty since it’s all accessible by sea.
- cwkoss 4y agoYeah, and further confounding is the timelines for connection to trade for different cultures also vary significantly. I would love to see a good visualization of the history of commodity trade.
- Xylakant 4y agoOver on mastodon someone posted this interesting find about spices on a 15th century Norse shipwreck https://hcommons.social/@bojacobs/109854101759930123 https://hcommons.social/@bojacobs/109854101759930123
- scroot 4y agoAnything with chilies of any kind -- hot peppers, bell peppers, what have you -- none of that was available outside of what is today Mexico/Central America before 500 years ago. So the "traditional" foods that have these are also quite young.
- kps 4y agoAlso tomatoes.
- ReptileMan 4y agoRule of thumb for me - if nobody from the first people that tasted it is no longer alive it is traditional.
- 4y ago
- overcast 4y agoWonderful news, this chocolate eclair is healthy for me!
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoSugar - sadly - isn't a spice.
- overcast 4y agoThe title is implying tasting good = healthy.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoMy point is that there's room for a little more nuance than that; "your body likes X because it's good for you" doesn't imply a universal rule, just a specific correlation.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TulliusCicero 4y agoIt's really more like tasting good = evolutionarily useful.
- carlmr 4y agoWhich is true for sugar. It's good if you get a few grams of sugar while running around the forest all day. It's not good to get half a pound of sugar from big gulp softdrinks while you're sitting in traffic.
- beebmam 4y agoNot necessarily, even in the evolutionary biology model. Something can taste good to humans entirely by accident, and be evolutionarily neutral (or even a small amount negative). Just like the reason men have nipples.
- mouse_ 4y agoMakes sense. Menthol (mint) is a vasoconstrictor, capsaicin is a vasodilator. Children will have no idea what this means, but they still know innately they're opposites of each other. Our instincts guide us when we listen.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoMenthol is also a kappa-opioid agonist and can cause pretty intense dysphoria.
- yarg 4y agoMenthol feels cold, chilli feels hot. Kids can notice at least that much.
- account42 4y agoMint and chili go great together: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larb
- redtriumph 4y agonit: This article should have (1999) in title. Interesting read nonetheless.
- dang 4y agoAdded. Thanks!
- jongjong 4y agoI think there is a lot of truth to it but it's imperfect because too much of a good thing can become poison. For example, sugar would have been very good for our ancestors; they could have eaten as much of it as they could possibly find and it would have helped them to survive... But now with technology, we have access to quantities of sugar which would have been unfathomable to our ancestors; so this good thing turned into a bad thing due to its abundance and unnaturally low cost made possible by technology. Bitterness is bad for us because it often signals the presence of poison. Spices are good because they help to preserve certain foods and prevent or slow bacteria growth (especially in hot climates were bacteria normally thrive; no coincidence that hot countries use a lot of spice). Slight acidity in flavor is good for the same reason. Our need for diversity of flavors is good because it encourages us to consume a broad range of essential nutrients without having to think too much. Protein is satisfying to eat because our bodies need it. It's quite obvious if you think about it that our tastes are actually very well calibrated. The only flaws are that we tend to abuse good things... But even then, most of us will feel disgust after consuming too much of a good thing. Some of us are more fine-tuned than others on the abuse side of the equation. I think that being overly neurotic about eating only 'healthy foods' even when they don't taste good is misguided. As Leslie Orgel pointed out "Evolution is cleverer than you are."
- zabzonk 4y agothe "coincedence" is that tropical countries are where many spices originate - it might be interesting to ask why this is so. some spices do have antibacterial/fungal effects, but so also do salt and (paradoxically) fermentation, where you replace any pathogenic bacteria with harmless ones. i have a jar of kimchee fermenting in the kitchen as i speak.
- colechristensen 4y agoMore or less every herb, spice, or medically active plant the flavor is a toxin targeted at pests, fungi, insects, bacteria, predators, etc.
- 4y ago
- le-mark 4y agoIt’s interesting to read this. I grew up eating a pretty limited diet in retrospect. The seasoning was salt and black pepper mostly. The first time I tried Indian food I was about 30 years old. I’ll never forget it. My mouth exploded with the flavor and a glow spread over me. It’s not that it was spicy as in hot, it was simply remarkable. I’ve often thought since that I must have been missing some sort of basic nutrient in the food that my body was deprived of. It was a very strong feeling.
- zabzonk 4y agoyes, i've always thought that about asian food. luckily, my parents were pretty cosmopolitan in this regard. to anyone that wants to explore it i can strongly recommend madhur jaffery's cook books - mostly simple recipes for great dishes.
- ekabod 4y agomadhur jaffrey
- xeromal 4y agoThere's a Thai place near me that sells a pri king with a delicious, delicious hot sauce that makes me feel the same way. The flavor is just unbelievably good. It's an essence.
- tomcam 4y agoYes to the Indian food! I got a second, even more powerful gut punch about 10 years ago when I discovered spicy Szechuan food. My wife "jokes" that I must have been a Szechuan farmer in a previous life. The weird thing is I stopped being able to eat spicy food in my late 40s because it destroyed my sleep, then in my late 50s Szechuan just turned me around somehow.
- scns 4y agoCapsaicin (Chili) is a chemical cousin to Caffein and Theobromin (Cocoa), Methylxanthines. I once ate some Cheeköfte with loads of Jalapeños at 9PM, could not sleep till 4AM.
- abvdasker 4y agoThis is interesting, but doesn't address a crucial question: yes, spices seem to give practical antimicrobial benefits in food preparation, but why do we enjoy spiced food more? Did it start out as something practical until we evolved a taste for more flavorful food due to its advantages (co-evolution)? Or do we like spiced food just because we're used to it (enviornmental)?
- lvxferre 4y agoPerhaps it's a side effect of our desire for different flavours, that would encourage us (in a wild environment) to seek a diversified diet that provides multiple types of nutrients.
- fsckboy 4y agonot answering your question at all, but animals tend to eat things in their pure form, while humans gained the ability to combine ingredients. Even if we like the smells and tastes of herbs and spices, we don't consume them straight either. I guess I don't know what other species even have the ability to smell-taste. Dogs for example, have much more sensitive smell than we do, but doesn't seem to influence what they eat much. We might simply be creating flavor profiles that remind us of better foods, like aromatic smells of ripe fruit instead of unripe.
- retrac 4y ago> Dogs for example, have much more sensitive smell than we do, but doesn't seem to influence what they eat much. I'm not sure. Raw potato? Not interesting to a dog. Boiled plain potatoes? They'd eat them if hungry but meh. Fried, salty potatoes? They love them as much as humans do. I think dogs distinguish those primarily by smell. Similarly, while a whole raw apple or carrot won't interest my dogs, they are into them if they're sliced up (presumably from the release of the scent).
- will_wright 4y agoI love this paper! I first read it years ago in college. The Botany of Desire is also a great read if you're into the study of plants and civilization
- jelder 4y agoWhen I became a parent, I learned another reason we spice our food: to protect parents’ meals from tiny thieving hands. I’m serious. I think there’s a slight evolutionary advantage to liking spiced food in adulthood.
- hypertele-Xii 4y agoYou're supposed to feed children, not deprive them of food.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoFirst feed yourself, then feed your dependents. They are dependent on you; If you starve, they too starve. Same goes for safety procedures on air flights, etc.
- pyth0 4y agoThe reason for that rule on airplanes is due to hypoxia, not quite the same as the food scenario.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoI was specifically referring to times of hypociba.
- hypertele-Xii 4y agoYou don't have enough food for the both of you?
- sowbug 4y agoAgain.
- watwut 4y agoI dont think this thread is describing starving situation. It describes family tug of war about flavored chips and seasoned piece of chicken in a table full of other food.
- beedeebeedee 4y agoThe father of a friend of mine (an intellectual medical doctor) has a theory that most of the fine foods in french cuisine and other cultures, are so prized because they have the same smells and microorganisms of the genitals. Really gross, but I think the evidence bears out- I forgot the foods that were mentioned, other than the cheeses, but there were several unexpected ones.
- zabzonk 4y agowell, we can all make up nonsensical stuff like that. i can't say what he was smelling, but i can guarantee there are no genital commensal organisms in say, a coq au vin.
- fragmede 4y agoTruffles and durian are other foods that comes to mind that smell like crotch.
- beedeebeedee 4y agoYeah! The only other one I can think of off hand is fish sauce
- fsckboy 4y agoseems more likely that food smells remind us of eating which we need to do several times a day, and less likely that they'd be using their charms to distract us from procreating.
- fsckboy 4y ago> Cookbooks generally distinguish between seasonings (spices used in food preparation) and condiments (spices added after food is served), but not between herbs and spices. huh? people in everyday speech frequently blur herbs and spices, and the "official sources" can say what they want about what's an herb and what's a spice, but cookbook style in western cuisines, the things we add to savory dishes tend to be herbs, fresh or dried green leaves, things like sage, rosemary, tarragon, and thyme. And spices tend to be non-green frequently ground to powder things we add to desserts, like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. In ancient times "the spice trade" brought spices from the near and far east, but herbs we grew ourselves. seasoning might have a more generic meaning ("italian seasoning" or "seasoning for stuffing"), but in practice it's salt and pepper that you adjust just before serving food, "season to taste"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lvxferre 4y ago>> Cookbooks generally distinguish between seasonings [...] and **condiments** [...] >huh? people in everyday speech frequently blur **herbs** and spices [...] Emphasis mine. Thyme, basil etc. are herbs; ketchup, mayo etc. are condiments. At least acc. to what most people would call them. The excerpt is correctly saying that people see stuff like ketchup, mayo etc. as intrinsically different from paprika, cloves etc.
- nitwit005 4y ago> Prediction 2. Use of spices should be greatest in hot climates, where unrefrigerated foods spoil especially quickly. That's seems backward to me. I'd expect more issues with food spoilage in cold climates, as food had to last through winter. People we're eating slowly rotting salted pork. I would expect more spices in hot climates simply due to their being a greater diversity of plants. The odds that one tastes nice randomly is higher.
- ddoolin 4y ago> Our test assumes that traditional meat-based recipes were developed before widespread refrigeration. We cannot directly evaluate this assumption because the cookbooks we examined rarely discussed the history of individual dishes. However, the assumption seems reasonable because any recipe that has been around for more than five generations (approximately 100 years) would pre-date electrical refrigeration. Most of the recipes we examined probably were at least that old. I'm sure this works, it's just funny to see it in a science publication.
- hoseja 4y ago>Spices are plant parts. That made me think, are there animal-derived spices? Obviously there are some mushroom ones (truffle salt), but animal? Maybe some insect?
- Ekaros 4y agoBonito flakes? It seems animal products are slightly differently used. Still I could consider broths or bouillons as spices, maybe fond as well. Milk gets interesting, is cheese like parmesan a spice? At least if just added on pasta or pizza after cooking? And then buttermilk and yogurt? Ingredients, but kind of bring spice in food?
- hbarka 4y agoI’ve long heard that there are five basic tastes that the human tongue can detect: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. I find the umami (savory) category of dishes to be the most flavorful but I can’t always put flavors into these distinct categories. If taste is musical notation, maybe there are more root notes than just five, or spices create major and minor chords.
- golol 4y agoI hate the word spicy in the english language. It can mean a number of completely different things: - High in capsacin - Creating some sort of pain or funny sensation when consumed - Containing "spices" depending on which definition you use - Being strongly seasoned/flavourful - Tasting good
- euroderf 4y agoThe noun "pepper" is pretty badly overloaded too.
- golol 4y agoAnd then "bland" is used as the opposite of "spicy"...
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoI am French and we have the word "piquant" which means "the painful kind". We unfortunately also have the word "épicé" which is like "spicy" in English, there are several meanings. I usually resort to saying "piquant" when I want the painful version and "épicé, mais pas piquant" ("spicy but not the painful kind") when I am talking about the flavour.
- hgsgm 4y ago- High in capsacin Hot or spicy - Creating some sort of pain or funny sensation when consumed Spicy - Containing "spices" depending on which definition you use Spiced - Being strongly seasoned/flavourful Spiced, Seasoned - Tasting good None of these.
- golol 4y agoIm not saying that one can not differentiate these things, but people absolutely use spicy/spiced to refer to all of these