The Necessary Spice

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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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

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 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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.

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 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 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. 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, 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

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

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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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.

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, 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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

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

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, 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 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