health

SPICE up your health!

MariyaKLeave a comment

Could SPICY FOOD make you HEALTHIER!?

While spicy foods are not particularly pleasant to the taste (the sensation they can create can be even that of pain) many people love spicy food! Indeed, spices have been highly valued and fought for throughout history! So other than enhancing the taste of food, perhaps there are other more potent reasons for their importance throughout the world?

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I’m reading a fascinating study* on the subject, and the authors hypothesize that adding spices to food is beneficial since they contain substances that inhibit or kill food-spoilage microorganisms (we know certain spices have antioxidant & antibacterial properties; others are powerful fungicides).

In short, the authors looked at traditional cookbooks, spices used in meat-based dishes, and country’s climate (since meat products in hot temperatures would spoil fastest).

The most used spices for the ~4,580 recipes analyzed were onion and pepper, followed by garlic, capsicums, lemon/lime juice, parsley, ginger, and bay leaf. The average spice was found to inhibit ~ 67% of bacteria (garlic, onion, allspice, and oregano inhibit EVERY bacterium they’ve been tested on!). It was found that more powerful spices were used more frequently in hotter climates= recipes from those countries have more antibacterial potential! Lemon and lime juice use appears to be strange- it is used a lot, while it has one of the lowest effects against bacteria. These juices, however, are syngergists (as well as pepper)! They act synergistically to enhance antibacterial effects of other spices.

HMMM…

Now as I was reading this, I thought- maybe hotter countries simply have more spices growing there? The authors found out that there was no relationship between a country’s mean annual temperature & number of spice plant species growing there.

Another problem I imagined- what about cooking? Perhaps heat destroys some of the antibacterial and other effects of spices? Turns out spices are thermostable and have similar effect even after steam-distillation.Image

INTERESTING fact I didn’t know- plant secondary compounds & essential oils can contain mutagenic, carcinogenic, and allergenic effects.. and while protecting oneself from food-borne illnesses outweighs the dangers of these chemicals, it would explain why kids and some pregnant women might dislike spices. [in the modern obesogenic food environment with french fries and twinkies, potentially negative health of spices should not be on top of our concern list]. Also important- medicine is pretty much a low dose of poison…so spices have been used to counteract ailments of all sorts (e.g. garlic for pneumonia, worms, etc). Animals are capable of self-medicating with strong-tasting vegetation as well.

In CONCLUSION, the authors believe that the main reason for spicy foods is to take advantage of the antimicrobial actions of the secondary compounds in plants… which contributes to survival, health, and reproduction. Therefore, many people (especially in hot climates) prefer spicy food. If you like it HOT- GOOD FOR YOU 😀

* Billing, J., & Sherman, P. W. (1998). Antimicrobial functions of spices: why some like it hot. Quarterly Review of Biology, 3-49.

p.s. this of course is not to be the only explanation why spicy foods are liked, there is also social learning and what not 😉

“Listen to your body”?

MariyaKLeave a comment

Could your body “tell” you what to eat due to its health state? If you’re deficient in a certain nutrient…will you instinctively crave foods with that nutrient?

Many believers in the “body wisdom” would say yes. Actually, i think the idea of body wisdom is extremely popular- I myself know this from the raw diet, and I am sure many alternative “natural” diets talk about this concept (e.g. intuitive eating?). Unknown

I think it is fascinating- that’s why I was excited to talk about this in my psychology of eating class. I tried to find a relevant peer-reviewed article for class discussion, but to my surprise found nothing. In class I understood why- there is no evidence for body wisdom in the literature. There originally was an idea that our bodies can tell what we are deficient in and gravitate towards foods with those nutrients- first rat studies seemed to prove that.  They had rats on a thiamine deficient diet choose between two new diets- one with thiamine, or the previous thiamine deficient one. The rats chose the thiamine diet. They could tell they needed vitamin B1, right? Not really- turns out the rats avoided the same thiamine-deficient diet not because they could sense the deficiency, but due to the learning that the original diet made them somehow sick.  Animals, thus, avoid eating whatever doesn’t make them feel good. They, like we, learn to eat what makes us feel good. The only thing you can have a specific hunger for (so you’d be able to choose food with that particular nutrient in it) is salt- it is easy to taste/identify and we have a genetically preprogrammed specific hunger to it.

Generalist vs. specialist?

When you think about it, animals seem to KNOW what to eat, what’s good for them (I hear people argue we have that ability too, or “body wisdom”). But let’s think about it…an animal that specializes in one kind of food (e.g. carnivore, insectivore) has a very narrow range of foods..they must get all essential elements from those foods= the identification of food can be programmed genetically into them. But for a species that eats anything(or “generalist” animals)– e.g. humans– the problem of finding food can be less demanding since there are many potential sources..and eating a nutritionally balanced diet can be achieved in many ways. Perhaps that’s why our body wisdom is not as acute- we are not dealing with a narrow range of foods. (See Paul Rozin for more)

SO?

I don’t know whether specific body wisdom really exists- the one that can signal you to eat a certain food because of a B vitamin you’re low on. Either way, I think we have access to a different kind of wisdom- choosing whole unprocessed foods is much closer to our evolved physiology than any of the new created foods that seem to be destroying our health. Apple vs. apple juice- that seems wise 😀