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