The History of Spicy Food
The spicy cuisine tradition has a long history in South America. They had always loved spicy food before Columbus made his way to South America. However, Columbus didn’t encounter the hottest chili pepper until he got to South America. And ever since, its attractiveness and efficacy have captivated them.
However, a recent study published in the journal Science suggests that this might not be the case. The reasoning behind this is that people in southwest Ecuador today claim to have combined it with other vegetables like corn and squash even before Columbus visited the continent. For a very long time, archaeologist Linda Perry of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and her colleagues studying starch regularly came across unknown grains in old kitchen equipment. These grains had a shape akin to jelly doughnuts or red blood cells. They were unaware of their identity.
Despite this, she discovered the thing that peppers might cause in her stomach by accident, and that information became crucial.
“Things like jelly donuts and red blood cells are caused by the indigestion of starch, but peppers are not a starchy food,” she said. She then pondered what it would be like if peppers also contained starch. Technically, we have identified the starch grains involved, and it turns out that the unknowns are pepper starch microfossils. This starch has been proven everywhere, not in a specific location, and its remnants have been found in Peru, the Bahamas, and Panama. Prior evidence of pepper presence has not yet been found, but it has been suspected due to the rapid breakdown of food traces in tropical climates. The people of the villages of Rome and Real Alto in Ecuador relished chili peppers at least 6,100 years ago, based on the strata of grated stones that conveyed grain. These results indicate that spicy cuisine has always been a favorite among ancient people. They have expanded quickly throughout Europe and Asia since Columbus first grew them more than 500 years ago, and they are now considered essential components for cooking from Hungary to Thailand (Biello, 2007).
Why do some cultures eat spicy foods and others don’t?
There are many nations on Earth, and the traditional cultures of these nations vary.
For this reason, not every meal in the world can be prepared in the same way. It would be quite monotonous if all foods were the same around the world.
Among those cultures and traditions are cuisines that originate from many traditions. Certain meals have a fiery taste, whereas others are sweeter, sour, or salty. There are many different types of food in every country, but every country also has unique qualities.
However, there is no better example of people liking or disliking spicy food than spicy food. In the East of the West, where spicy food is not well developed, there may be a large number of people who have never experienced spicy food and who don’t even know what spicy food exists. In contrast, spicy food is preferred by Westerners, whereas in Asia, spicy food is a natural part of life, even if it’s not something you choose. There is unquestionably a cultural divide in terms of tolerance for hot cuisine. In my opinion, there are two types of spicy food: eastern and western. While the West has produced oily, sweet, and salty dishes, the East has evolved a wide array of spicy foods. Why do we assume that such a distinction can be made? And why do we consume hot meals (Devlin, Moore, 2018)?
The health benefits of spicy food
When food goes bad, it does more than just lose its flavor—it also poses serious health risks to us. We don’t eat foods that are bad for our body, which is why food tastes strange when it starts to go bad. Many developments of the modern day seem to slow down degradation even more. Freezers and refrigerators are good instances of this. With refrigerators these days, we don’t worry as much about food spoilage. But the main issue was that food went bad before freezers were invented. Because of this, the chefs made an effort to gradually increase the food’s shelf life by adding new flavors. A typical example of this is French toast. French toast is one of many people’s favorite foods in the modern era, when bread is served with eggshells, sugar, or salt. However, these French toasties were actually invented to make old bread last longer. Spicy food was probably created to extend the shelf life of food, as was the case with French toast being invented. Food is weaker in warm places than in cold areas. That is why keeping it in a warm place can spoil food faster than in a warm, cold place. For these reasons, Southeast Asia, or countries with very high temperatures, tends to use more spices than other countries in order to slow down food spoilage a little more. Considering all of these factors, it is clear that cultures surrounding spicy food and spices have developed in hot nations or places for reasons other than flavor: to keep food from rotting. Strong antimicrobial qualities in spices have been shown to slow down food degradation and enable us to live a healthier diet. Therefore, when prepared with spices, ruined meat is less likely to cause harm to our bodies. Because spices kept us safe from harm throughout human history, we would have adapted our tastes and affection for them to suit our needs.
That’s why people who live in hot countries or regions that have no choice but to rely more on spices may have a better immune system to spicy food than people in other countries (Moore Devlin, 2018).
Why does the spiciest food come from hot places?
Twenty years ago, intriguing research was released explaining why the hottest dishes originate from hot regions: changes in the use of spices are indicators of cultural evolution. Paul Sherman and colleagues who published this research worked out why adding spices in a way that can minimize food poisoning is significant because many spices include antibacterial capabilities.
For this reason, cultures that have adapted to eating spicy cuisine may be able to lower the rate of infection more effectively than other communities. We refer to this intriguing theory as “Darwinian gastronomy.”
Can the choice of spicy food be an adaptation that helps cultures survive in hot climates, where the risk of infection from food can wreak havoc in terms of health and survival? Sherman and his colleagues not only collected traditional recipes from around the world to test this ‘Darwinian gastronomy’ hypothesis but also found that the average number of spices used per recipe was significantly related to the region’s average temperature.
However, there is a particular problem with the cultural and environmental characteristics of these regions. Nearby and related cultures tend to share many aspects of culture, including cooking, and have similar environments, including temperature and parasite load, creating similar associations between cultural and environmental variables.( Bromham, 2021).
Spicy foods can cause a “high.”
While many people know that spices are “flavored,” they actually are “sense,” not flavor. Many people may think of capsaicin when they think of the hottest cuisine. The kick to hot peppers originates from a chemical component called capsaicin, which intensifies their heat. Eating capsaicin makes us feel as though our bodies are in peril and produces agony. However, concurrently with its perception of danger, the body releases a hormone known as pleasure. The body releases endorphins when it feels threatened or pleased, which is a natural reaction to spicy food. Additionally, when the body experiences joy or fear, endorphins are released. This chemical release creates a “high” state akin to the positive emotions experienced after working out, leading some individuals to link eating spicy food with happiness. The hormone known as adrenaline, which the body releases when it senses danger, may provide the thrill of feeling threatened while still being joyful, akin to riding a rollercoaster or bungee jump. In summary, consuming hot or spicy cuisine is often associated with thrill-seeking (CookinGenie, 2021).
Hot peppers are full of antimicrobial properties.
It makes sense that peppers’ potent compounds, which have the ability to make our bodies feel threatened, would also be able to harm and hurt other microbes, including bacteria and viruses. Peppers were frequently used to halt hazardous microbes like bacteria in hot parts of the world and preserve food before utilizing refrigerated storage. Peppers were actually one of the life-saving ingredients and were essential for food safety. For this reason, traditional cuisine from hot nations like Thailand and Mexico tends to be quite spicy, while food from temperate nations like England and Scandinavia is generally less spicy. So, because of this antibacterial property found in spicy peppers, many cultures have created traditional spicy food, and billions of people have come to love it for generations (CookinGenie, 2021).
CookinGenie. (2021). Why do we Love Spicy Food? The Science Behind the Heat. [online] Available at: https://cookingenie.com/content/blog/why-we-love-spicy-food-science-behind-the-heat [Accessed 28 December 2023].
Moore Devlin, T. (2018). Why Do Some Cultures Eat Spicy Foods And Others Don’t? [online] Babbel Magazine. Available at: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/spicy-foods [Accessed 28 December 2023].
Biello, D. (2007). Humans Like It Hot: Spicy Peppers on the Menu for Thousands of Years. [online] Scientific American. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-like-hot-spicy-peppers/ [Accessed 28 December. 2023].
Bromham, L. (2021). Why do hot countries have spicy food? [online] Research Communities by Springer Nature. Available at: https://communities.springernature.com/posts/why-do-hot-countries-have-spicy-food [Accessed 28 December 2023].
