Darwinian Gastronomy: Why We Use Spices (1999)

[le-mark]

It’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.

[danans]

> 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.

That's funny, I grew up eating very spicy Indian food, and I had the same experience the first time I ate lox ;)

[tomcam]

Yes 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.

[Insanity]

I'm going to guess you're Western European (French, Belgian, German, that neighbourhood) based on this. Because I had pretty much the same experience, although I was about ~24'ish I'd say.

[euroderf]

Once spent an evening eating at an Iranian place. At some point I had to stop eating, simply because the food had put too much / too many spices in me. It was a really odd sensation. Just could not eat any more. The only time this has happened. Not hotness/chili, nothing like that. Just a full-body sensation of too much spice.

[samstave]

You will love this quote from a Chef making Tikka Marsala :

"Here is a french Chef making an Indian dish which was invented in Scotland"

I think its this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwUCo0imYVM

[zabzonk]

yes, 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.

[xeromal]

There'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.

[TEP_Kim_Il_Sung]

Had some Chicken Tandoori the other day. Didn't feel hungry for two days after. Just one serving.

[xattt]

My spouse and I eat spicy foods. I’ve got a 6-year-old that’s tried it but chooses not to because he doesn’t like the sensation. It goes both ways!

[jongjong]

I 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]

the "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.

[golol]

I 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

[BrandoElFollito]

I 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.

[euroderf]

The noun "pepper" is pretty badly overloaded too.

[hgsgm]

- 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.

[abvdasker]

This 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]

Perhaps 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]

not 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.

[cwkoss]

Hmm. 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]

When 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.

[jppope]

I noticed this too. They seem to avoid the alternative hypothesis that it's harder to grow certain plants in different climates. After all Scandinavia isn't known for it's native citrus fruits.

[fsckboy]

> 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"

[lvxferre]

>> 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.

[overcast]

Wonderful news, this chocolate eclair is healthy for me!

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

When food was scarce? That eclair would absolutely improve your chance of survival.

[twelvedogs]

The ingredients probably are, the quantities possibly not

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Sugar - sadly - isn't a spice.

[bretbernhoft]

This 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.

[nitwit005]

> 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.

[trillic]

My back porch hasn't been warmer than my refrigerator for more than a couple hours since November.

[aflag]

I think you understimate how quickly things go bad in a hot humid climate.

[beedeebeedee]

The 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]

well, 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]

Truffles and durian are other foods that comes to mind that smell like crotch.

[fsckboy]

seems 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.

[mouse_]

Makes 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.

[yarg]

Menthol feels cold, chilli feels hot. Kids can notice at least that much.

[ddoolin]

> 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.

[hbarka]

I’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.

[redtriumph]

nit: This article should have (1999) in title.

Interesting read nonetheless.

[jelder]

When 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.

[will_wright]

I 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

[hoseja]

>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]

Bonito 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?

[cm2187]

And so does nutella and peanut butter.