Why vegetable recipes are not very spicy

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Abstract

Spices are aromatic plant materials that are used in cooking. Recently it was hypothesized that spice use yields a health benefit: cleansing food of parasites and pathogens before it is eaten, thereby reducing food poisoning and foodborne illnesses. In support, most spices have antimicrobial properties and use of spices in meat-based recipes is greatest in hot climates, where the diversity and growth rates of microorganisms are highest. A critical prediction of the antimicrobial hypothesis is that spices should be used less in preparing vegetables than meat dishes. This is because cells of dead plants are better protected physically and chemically against bacteria and fungi than cells of dead animals (whose immune system ceased functioning at death), so fewer spices would be necessary to make vegetables safe for consumption. We tested this corollary by compiling information on 2129 vegetable-only recipes from 107 traditional cookbooks of 36 countries. Analyses revealed that spice use increased with increasing ambient temperature, but less dramatically than in meat-based recipes. In all 36 countries, vegetable dishes called for fewer spices per recipe than meat dishes; 27 of these differences were significant. Of 41 individual spices, 38 were used less frequently in vegetable recipes; 30 of these differences were significant. Proportions of recipes that called for >1 spice and >1 extremely potent antimicrobial spice also were significantly lower for vegetable dishes. By every measure, vegetable-based recipes were significantly less spicy than meat-based recipes. Within-country analyses control for possible differences in spice plant availability and degrees of cultural independence. Results thus strongly support the antimicrobial hypothesis.

Section snippets

Background

Spices are aromatic plant materials. They come from woody shrubs or vines, aromatic lichens, parts of trees, and the roots, flowers, seeds, or fruits of herbaceous plants (Farrell, 1990). For thousands of years, spices have been used in food preparation and preservation, as well as embalming, aiding digestion, lowering blood pressure, and increasing sexual potency Dillon & Board, 1994, Govindarajan, 1985, Hirasa & Takemasa, 1998. During the Middle Ages and after, hazardous voyages were

Methods

We compiled lists of all the spices called for in the vegetable-based recipes of traditional cookbooks from the same 36 countries whose meat-based recipes were analyzed previously by Billing and Sherman (1998). The countries (Table 1) lie on six continents and represent 16 of the world's 19 major linguistic groups (Ruhlen, 1987). For each country, the mean annual temperature was calculated by averaging data from all major cities listed in Conway and Liston (1990).

A vegetable-based recipe was

Results

Among all 36 countries in our sample (Table 1), traditional vegetable-based recipes called for a mean of 2.4±1.4 spices. This was significantly fewer than the 3.9±1.7 spices/recipe called for in traditional meat-based recipes from the same countries (t=−4.00, P<.001).

Relative frequencies of use of 41 individual spices were similar in vegetable- and meat-based recipes, i.e., the curves for both types of dishes approximated negative exponentials and the same seven spices were used most commonly

Discussion

Crosscultural analyses always confront “Galton's problem” (Hartung, 1982): How to select societies for comparison that adequately represent the range of cultural variation but minimize cases where similarities are due to recent common derivation or diffusion. Independence of data points is desirable statistically but, as was discussed by Ember and Otterbein (1991) and Mace and Pagel (1994), independence of specific cultural practices often is impossible to assess. Mace and Pagel advocated using

Acknowledgements

We offer sincere thanks to the dedicated staff at Cornell University's Mann and Nestlé Libraries for expert research assistance. For helpful discussions and comments, we thank J.G. Albeck, M.C.B. Andrade, S.M. Flaxman, T. A. Gavin, D.G. Haskell, M.E. Hauber, M.D. Holland, G. Jarrow, C.M. Lau, R.C. Lloyd, C.M. Kagarise-Sherman, P. Pliner, P. Rozin, G.C. Willams, and members of Cornell's Animal Behavior Lunch Bunch. Financial support was provided by the National Science Foundation and the College

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