https://www.newfoodmagazine.com/article/143569/myth-breakers-spicy-food/
For my first food media review, I decided to pick an article from New Food Magazine. The article titled, “Myth Breakers- spicy food helps prevent foodborne illness” talks about Darwinian gastronomy and why spicy food is more common in the hotter countries rather than the colder countries. I decided to pick this text because in the past I have heard that spicy food helps with your body so it would interest me to read an article that talks about the connection between spicy food and foodborne illnesses. While I was reading this article, I found the part of Darwinian gastronomy the most interesting. Darwinian gastronomy in other words is when food from each culture/cuisine is thought to help with adapting to our natural environment. For example, in this case, the article mentions how spicy food is common in more hotter countries such as Thailand and India because it can prevent you from getting sick. However, this text proves that this is not the case. The text states, “We found that hotter countries do use more spices per recipe, but this is largely due to patterns of similarity between related and neighboring cultures.” This quotation from the article proves that spices do not actually help with keeping people healthy but instead it tends to be more culture related. To prove this, an experiment was conducted where they collected 33,000 plus recipes from 70 cuisines. To conclude, their hypothesis that spice could prevent airborne illness was proven wrong. As I continued reading, one thing that shocked me was that spice could lead to poor health outcomes and lower a person’s life expectancy. This shocked me because rather than being helpful to foodborne illnesses, it actually could lead to a higher risk of infection from diseases such as malaria. That being said, it is found that spicy food is much more common in places with lower socioeconomic status. In my opinion, being in lower socioeconomic classes ties in with a lower life expectancy because people in these areas are not consuming enough nutritious intake daily. After reading this text, it made me wonder if there is an effect of the spice that many Americans consume daily.
I think that this text was really interesting. I never really thought about the fact that spices came from the much hotter countries or how eating spice could have health effects. It was something that I never paid much attention to. I feel that after reading this text and knowing about how spicy food decreases life expectancy, it makes me not want to consume too much spice. Like mentioned before, I found the Darwinian gastronomy super interesting because I also always thought that eating spicy food could actually help you when you’re feeling unwell. Although it is proven that spicy food doesn’t actually connect with preventing airborne illness, I think that this text from New Food Magazine was overall really interesting. It allowed me to have a better general understanding of spice from other countries and the effects that it poses.
Mindy, I agree with you that this whole idea of “Darwinian Gastronomy” is really fascinating. I remember learning years ago that spices were used to camouflage the fact that you were serving food that was often not so fresh! I don’t think that there is a causal relationship between eating spicy food and shorter life expectancy, but your observation that poorer countries eat spicier food (if it’s true) is interesting!
Hi Mindy, before reading your review, I have never heard of the myth that spicy foods can prevent foodborne illness. This was interesting to read about the correlation between spice and health. I also agree with your statement about how lower socioeconomic class correlated to lower life expectancy. It would be interesting to see more studies between spice and health in the future.
Hi Mindy, I have never heard of this theory either. I have never been into spicy food however, my parents eat it every day. They would not be able to eat a dish if it didn’t have some type of kick into it this is why this article grabbed my attention. I do agree that spicy food is found in the lower socioeconomic classes. When I used to go to Mexico it was very common to see people eat a lot of species however, there were certain areas in Mexico. There will be people who ate more species than others and these places tended to be lower class.