Sunday, September 28, 2008

ADDICTION OR CRAVING?




Ears smoke, Mouth burns, Eyes water

Are chile peppers addictive? This question has been the subjects of a great deal of debate in scientific, social, and gourmet circles. Chile peppers, they all agree, are addictive. They produce an intense craving for eating more on a daily basis. Bland food consumption by chile pepper addicts does not produce "that satisfaction." The question is whether this intense craving for hot chile peppers is true addiction or whether it is just a psychological addiction? Some tend to believe that it has more to do with the mind than the body.

Tobacco and chile peppers belong to the same botanical family and have alkaloids that produce almost the same sort of body response, where neurons become "numb" to the dose and develop tolerance, requiring increasing dosages to achieve the same effect. So in order to get the heat response, people eat more and more or hotter chillies.

Surprisingly, there is no withdrawal symptoms if one stops eating chile peppers. But with Tobacco, it is the reverse. Tobacco consumption actually increases the numbers of receptors and aggravates the addiction. Read what a Duke university study reveals:

"A study at Duke University Medical Center revealed that in smaller doses, capsaicin and nicotine create some of the same physiological responses which include irritation, secretion, sneezing, vasodilation, coughing and peptide release. In larger doses, when injected, capsaicin destroys many of the neurons containing its receptors, while nicotine actually increases the number of nicotine acetylcholine receptors. The result is that large doses of capsaicin result in the body becoming less responsive to capsaicin, but that large doses of nicotine cause the body to become more responsive to nicotine." (with thanks from an article by Jane Butel).

Nicotine causes both psychological and physiological dependency, with the mind and body wanting more and more. But capsaicin in chile peppers does not make your body dependent!

Addiction to consuming chile peppers, therefore, is more of a craving than a physiological addiction. Nonetheless, it can be a habit forming food, as any chilephile will tell you!

There is, however, a big difference. To get nicotine you need to ingest tobacco, which can be carcinogenic and leads to very many diseases that your body cannot fight against after some time. Eating chile peppers, on the other hand, is a healthy habit. Capsaicin helps remove arthritic pain, toothache, and muscular spasmodic pains when used topically. The pupular Lakota analgesics, despite their fanciful marketing featuring images of dramatic American Indians and bird calls, contain nothing more than capsaicin!

When taken internally, capsaicin is antibacterial. It benefits the whole alimentary canal and purifies the blood through increased blood flow and sweating. It also helps in the digestion of food by stimulating the production of digestive juices. It can kill cells responsible for diabetes. It reduces and removes cholesterol problems. It also can remove sinus congestion.

Chile peppers, like many other vegetables, leave an alkaline residue in the body upon digestion. An alkaline body is most desirable, because it does not let cancer cells or colds, viruses, flus, etc. survive in the body. No wonder cayenne finds its place next to honey, lemon (a strong alkalizing food, despite its acidic taste), and ginger in some peoples' regimens of natural cold remedies.

Capsaicin has been found to induce mass suicide of prostate cancer cells and cancers of many other types. The research of capsaicin as a medicine is sustaining momentum and almost all the countries are doing research in benefits of consuming chile peppers.

...all that aside, I will be posting the true way to fall in love with chile peppers tomorrow or so...


(Image taken from Clip art with thanks)
Thanks to a Canadian friend for his editing inputs.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

VICTIM OF "EVIL EYE"?


North India is 180 degrees opposite of South India in every aspect including political views.

But one thing that is common is the use of Chile peppers to ward off Evil Eye effects.

In India, chile peppers are used in many different ways to ward off evil eye. Most popular among the methods is to hang five or seven chile peppers strung with a lemon at the bottom or in between.

This contraption is hung plumb at the entrance of any home or shop.

Young children and pretty girls often suffer due to the "EVIL EYE" effect. Their anxious and worried mothers and grandmothers remove the bad effects by throwing salt and dry chile pepper pods in a fire after performing simple rituals like circling salt and chile pods or mustard seeds and chile pods over the victim's heads and body and then throwing them in the fire. The resultant smoke removes the evil eye effects!!

Try it out....You've got nothing to lose (except seven chile peppers and a lime).



Note: The image was taken from the net with thanks to the original poster.

Friday, September 26, 2008

HILLARY'S HEALTH PLAN


Hot Peppers

Picking peppers for perfect health? (Alicia Wagner Calzada/Associated Press)


During a recent “60 Minutes” interview, Senator Hillary Clinton unveiled a surprising weapon in her fight to become the Democratic presidential nominee: hot peppers.
“I eat a lot of hot peppers,” she told CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who had asked her how she maintains her stamina on the campaign trail. “I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it. I think it keeps my metabolism revved up and keeps me healthy.”
Nutritionists say Mrs. Clinton may be on to something. Although the scientific study of hot peppers is limited, there are some suggestions that capsaicin, the active ingredient in peppers, has numerous health benefits.
For starters, peppers contain several important nutrients, including beta-carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin and vitamin C, said Jonny Bowden, a board-certified nutritionist and author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth.” In fact, peppers contain about twice the amount of vitamin C found in citrus fruits, which may help explain why they have emerged as a popular home remedy for fighting colds
Much of the research on capsaicin involves pain relief, and capsaicin is a common ingredient in over-the-counter pain creams. The analgesic effect of the capsaicin found in peppers may help explain why Mrs. Clinton believes it makes her feel better.
“People on those kinds of schedules, they are wearing their body down and not sleeping much,” Dr. Bowden said. “Possibly it could be like taking a couple of aspirins.”
Hot peppers also may slightly boost the metabolism, which could give Mrs. Clinton a sense of having more stamina and energy. “If you ate a big hot pepper, it would be hard to go right to sleep,” Dr. Bowden said.

RECIPE FOR LONG & HEALTHY LIFE


When I hear of people who are relatively young , complaining of Sugar, blood pressure and such and when I hear even middle aged people complaining of prostrate
Problem in addition to the above, I suspect that there is something wrong with their diet.
And in actuality, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEIR DIET.

I am fortunate enough to have spent my childhood in a remote village in Gujarat India, where we had people who lived long.
They were people who lived off the land and had simple lifestyles.
The only fruits they had were what grew locally which were Berries, Palm Date fruits, and Bananas. Oranges were used only when someone was bed ridden. Apples were a luxury meant only for rich and were simply never available.

Their diet was simple fare of Wheat bread (Rotis), Millet bread, Lentils, fresh vegetables and thin buttermilk.

So what made them healthy and long living? Why did they not suffer from Blood pressure or Diabetes or prostrate problems?
Why they did not have heart problems or Cholesterol?

On the face of it, many factors can be said to be responsible for their happiness.
But at the bottom, I found that these people were lovers of Green/Red peppers or what we called as Mirchis or Marchas (Chillies).

My grandfather lived to see 96 summers. He never fell sick and never ever took any injection in his life. He would consume 1 tsp of fiery chilli powder every single day along with his curry or Dal.
In addition, he would take Green chillies stir fried in little oil with a dash of salt or a couple of stuffed chillies.

My sister's father in law lived to see 100 summers and he too had a habit of eating at least three to four stir fried green peppers as mentioned above with his lunch.

My wife's grandmother from father's side and her grand mother from mother's side lived to see 98 and 104 summers respectively.
They too used to consume fair amount of green peppers and red chilli powder in their daily simple meal.

I attributed their long lives to simple living without any stress all along.
But after becoming an avid or say rabid addict to Naga Jolokia aka Naga Morich, I discovered a lot of scientific proofs of Capsaicin acting as an elixir by destroying many forms of cancers, diabetes, prostrate problems, cholesterol and what not.

I don't say that green chillies or red pepper powders etc are cure all remedy. But I do believe in the fact that this small wonder called chilli has been responsible for many a good things that have happened to us because we loved to eat fiery little chillies.

There is a way in which this little wonder has to be used to derive the best out of it.
We will post the method next.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

GLOBAL WARMING OF CHILLI KIND


Summer Journey
Chili Peppers:



In 1492, when Christopher Columbus set off from Spain to find a westward route to Asia, he was looking to secure Europe's kitchen, not change it. Europeans had used black pepper as a medicinal aid and to spice up their cooking since Greek and Roman times. The ingredient, imported from the Spice Islands of Asia, had fueled the economies of trading ports like Alexandria, Genoa and Venice. But by the Middle Ages, black pepper had become a luxury item, so expensive that it was sold by the corn and used to pay rent and taxes. When the traditional land and sea routes to Asia were cut off by the rise of the Ottoman Empire, European traders looked for new ways to India and the lands beyond — not just for pepper but for other lucrative spices, and for silks and opium. Columbus headed west, certain he would find a new route to the East Indies. He never got there, of course, but in the islands of the New World the Italian navigator found a fiery pod that would, within years, not only infuse southern European cooking with bold new flavors but also revolutionize cooking in India, China and Thailand, the very places he'd set out to reach.
The remarkable spread of the chili (or chilli, or chile, or chile pepper, to use just a few of its myriad names and spellings) is a piquant chapter in the story of globalization. Few other foods have been taken up by so many people in so many places so quickly. Ask a Chinese chili lover or an Indian or a Thai and most will swear that chilies are native to their homeland, so integral is the spice to their cooking, so deeply embedded is it in their culture. European and American chili addicts, though less numerous, are just as passionate about the spice.
In terms of keeping billions of people fed, the chili can hardly compare to rice or corn or even potatoes, of course. But by adding spice to such staples, by making even the poorest food rich in flavor, the chili has become one of the most important ingredients in the world. For hundreds of millions of poor, chilies are the one luxury they can afford every day, a small burst of flavor in the slums of Asia or the parched grazing land of West Africa. The secret to the chili's success lies in the fantastically colorful pods themselves: the chemicals that make them so hot and addictive. "Once we develop a taste for hot food, which provides a high, there is no going back," says renowned Indian cook Madhur Jaffrey. "It turns into a craving." The chili, she says, is not so much a seed of change "as a conqueror, or, better still, a master seducer."
Chilies are native to South America, where people have been cultivating and trading them for at least 6,000 years. Linda Perry, a postdoctoral fellow in archaeobiology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, has identified microfossils of the starch grains found in chilies on grinding stones and cooking pots unearthed in the Caribbean, Venezuela and the Andes. In a paper published in Science last February, she and fellow researchers found that domesticated chilies were being eaten in southern Ecuador some 6,250 years ago. Because there are no wild chilies in southern Ecuador, domesticated plants must have been brought there from elsewhere, perhaps from Peru or Bolivia where, according to Perry and other scientists, chilies were probably first grown by humans. "For whatever reason, a lot of people really liked them," Perry says. "Once they were domesticated, they spread very quickly around South America and into Central America."
Chilies belong to the genus Capsicum, a member of the nightshade family that includes tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants. Only five of Capsicum's 25 species have been cultivated, and in South America, where most of the world's wild chilies are still found, chilies' shapes and colors are far more varied than the classic curved red or green ones of Mexican cooking or the small bullet-shaped "bird's-eye" chilies used in Thai cooking, or the sweet green and orange bell peppers or capsicums found in a million salads. There are pea-shaped chilies, heart-shaped chilies, chilies with the bumps and nodes of a surrealist brain, and chilies that are flat and long like a bean. They come in purple, rusty red, yellow, black, bright orange and lime green. "There are thousands of types and we're still discovering new ones," says Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at the New Mexico State University in Santa Fe. "The variations are incredible."
By the time Columbus sailed into the Caribbean in the late 15th century, chilies were a long-established part of most diets across the Americas. But as British author Lizzie Collingham relates in her excellent history Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, which tells the story of India and its rulers through their food, Europeans initially weren't that enamored with the new spice that Columbus brought back from the New World. "On the Iberian peninsula," writes Collingham, "chilies were grown more as curious ornamental plants than as sources of a fiery flavoring." But if Europeans didn't immediately fall for the chili, they did become its greatest propagator. Portuguese traders carried it to settlements and nascent colonies in West Africa, in India and around East Asia. Within 30 years of Columbus' first journey, at least three different types of chili plants were growing in the Portuguese enclave of Goa, on India's west coast. The chilies, which probably came from Brazil via Lisbon, quickly spread through the subcontinent, where they were used instead of black pepper.
In Thailand, a short-lived Portuguese presence failed to convert the locals to Christianity but succeeded in revolutionizing the Thai kitchen. European traders introduced the spice to Japan. As chilies were added to the cooking pots of Asia, they also entered existing local trade routes and were taken to Indonesia, Tibet and China. The speed of their spread was phenomenal. Within a half-century of chilies arriving in Spain, they were being used across much of Asia, along the coast of West Africa, through the Maghreb countries of North Africa, in the Middle East, in Italy, in the Balkans and through Eastern Europe as far as present-day Georgia. Chilies spread so quickly in part because they are easy to grow in a wide range of climates and conditions, and therefore cheap and always available. "It was something spicy that now anybody could afford," says Bosland. "It was probably the very first plant that was globalized."
It wasn't the only new plant on the market, of course. Columbus returned from his journeys with baskets of strange vegetables and fruits including tomatoes, potatoes and corn. But nothing spread as fast as chilies. Bosland believes it was because people thought the red pods were a new type of black pepper. "People are very conservative when it comes to food," he says. "But here was something that they thought they knew, only it was spicier and easier to grow and get hold of." Tomatoes and potatoes took much longer to spread through Europe and Asia.
In recent years, chilies have returned to Europe from Asia on the menus of Indian and Thai restaurants. Indian food is now the most popular cuisine in Britain. In 2001 then Foreign Minister Robin Cook called chicken tikka masala — a British invention that mixes chicken, cream and tomato puree with chili and other spices — the country's national dish. In the U.S. — where, of course, the chili had arrived thousands of years ago from further south — Mexican food is ever more popular; salsas and chili sauces have outsold tomato-based ketchup since the early 1990s.


Why do we like hot chilies so much? Why eat something that can hurt us? The heat in chilies comes from their capsaicinoids, a series of related compounds concentrated in a chili's internal ribs and seeds. The capsaicinoids turn on the pain receptors in our mouth and on our tongue. It's essentially a defense mechanism designed to stop animals devouring the pod. "The body reacts as if it's a poison," says David Thompson, an Australian cook responsible for some of the most inventive Thai cooking of the past decade and owner of Nahm, London's only Thai restaurant with a Michelin star. "It expects more than just a wallop of heat, but that's all it gets." At a very low level, that wallop is addictive because our body's nervous system releases endorphins, a type of mild natural opiate, to ease the sting. It's that mix of pleasure and pain that makes eating chilies such a wonderful experience. "The reason people get excited about eating more and more of them is you have an adrenaline rush," says Thompson, who lives half the year in Bangkok to immerse himself in Thai cooking traditions. "We want more."
We also seem to want hotter. In the past few years, chili lovers in places such as the U.S. and the U.K. have become obsessed with eating the hottest chili, the hottest sauce, the hottest anything. In an episode of the animated series The Simpsons, Homer Simpson coats his throat with hot wax so he can eat a steaming hot chili "grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum." Colleagues have inundated me with stories of their own encounters with chilies. One said he'd eaten chilies in Thailand that "stripped the enamel off my teeth." Our Southeast Asia bureau chief told me she had grown up having chili-eating competitions with her father. "I'm proud to say I once beat him," she wrote. "But then had to absent myself from school for an afternoon because of the consequences. Mother was not amused."
In September 2000, a military laboratory in the garrison town of Tezpur in northeastern India announced that it had identified the hottest chili in the world. Chili heat is measured in Scoville Heat Units (shus), from the American chemist Wilbur Scoville who invented the scale in 1912. Pure capsaicin, the main capsaicinoid in a chili, measures 16 million shu. A bell pepper typically measures zero. An Italian peperoncino, used to spice up pasta dishes in southern Italy, measures about 500 shu, while the spiciest Thai chilies come in at around 100,000. Most people are reduced to tears by eating anything above 200,000, and until now the hottest chili ever measured was the Red Savina, a type of habanero grown in California by a commercial chili farmer, which measured 577,000 shu.
According to the tests carried out by India's Defence Research Laboratory, pods from the bhut jolokia, or "ghost chili," a plant grown across northeastern India, had measured 855,000 shu. The chili world met the claim with skepticism, but in 2005 the Chile Pepper Institute in New Mexico finally grew enough bhut jolokia from seeds a member had collected in India to be able to test it. The results were stunning: the bhut jolokia, also called the Naga chili after a traditionally fierce local tribe that enjoys eating them, measured just over 1 million shu, the sort of heat you normally find only in the hottest chili sauces made from pure pepper extract.
On a recent visit to Tezpur, I met with the director of the Defence Research Laboratory, R.B. Srivastava, and the scientist in charge of cultivating the bhut jolokia, R.K.R. Singh. The two men explained that the bhut jolokia was so popular in northeastern India that it was known as "the king of chilies" and celebrated in a festival that coincides with the beginning of the chili season in April. The men discussed the possibility of using the bhut jolokia in antiriot weapons such as tear gas. (I wasn't allowed into the laboratories, Srivastava said, because I was a foreign national and clearance could take weeks.) The bhut jolokia might also make a good food for India's troops, he suggested. We joked about soldiers eating bhut jolokias to get in the right mood before going into battle. "A balanced approach has to be there," Srivastava said, half seriously, "or they will be running to the toilet all the time." The laboratory is contemplating applying for Geographical Indication certification, which would mean only bhut jolokias from northeastern India could be sold as such. "The commercial applications are there," said Srivastava, who mentioned using the chili in medicines and even, by smearing it on string encircling villages, to keep elephants away from crops and humans. "Chilies are packed with vitamins and just so good for you."
After some time, a colleague brought in a small saucer containing three bhut jolokia pods. The pods had been picked a few weeks earlier and were beginning to shrivel. They were about 5 cm long and a burnt orange color. They had an extremely pleasant smoky aroma — half the reason people in the region adore them, said Singh, who is from the nearby state of Manipur and found the bhut jolokia "horrible" as a child but now loves it in small doses. With a cup of milky tea on hand in case of an emergency (milk or yoghurt is a much better way to counter the effects of chilies than water or alcohol), I used my fingernails to tear off a tiny shard of bhut jolokia skin. The men warned me not to try the seeds or the ribs. "Just place it on your tongue, don't swallow," Singh said. The heat took a few seconds to register but quickly spread across my tongue and around my mouth. It was hot, but not unpleasant. I tore off a slightly larger piece of chili and placed it between my front teeth. As I bit down I could feel the chemicals burst out and begin to heat my gums and tongue and down into the top of my throat. I took a swig of tea. Singh smiled and suggested I stop there. "You survived," he said.
Chefs such as David Thompson dismiss the fixation on heat alone. "In countries where chilies have been part of the cooking culture for centuries, that rather adolescent approach has been discarded a long time ago. People in those places don't have to prove their manhood by trying to eat the most number of chilies at one go," Thompson says. He pauses and then adds, "although I've certainly been guilty of that." The point of chilies, he says, is not just the heat but the way they enhance the flavors of other ingredients. "Chili is not meant to swamp or overpower but act as a counterpoint to something salty or sour or sweet, or to heighten the sensation of textures," he says. No wonder, then, that in five centuries, the chili has successfully seduced the entire planet.


With thanks from Time CNN

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Bullock-Cart drivers and Chillies

Madras bullock cart drivers are among the cruelest I have ever seen.
I am a witness to the horrifying practice of punishing the bullocks by torture which they unleashed on helpless animals.

Since our house was on the arterial road to all the markets, there was a constant stream of bullock carts laden with goods beyond poor animal's capacity, that was flowing on Audiappa Naicken street. The cart drivers would sometimes load three to four tonnes of goods for two bullocks to pull. They would normally use a short cat o nine tails (whip) and if that failed, rub Guntur Chilli pods (freshly broken by them) in helpless animal's eyes. They used to have a small cloth bag tied to their waist which stored these chillies.The fiery heat would make the animals to panic and pull the goods. As a small boy, I was moved to tears on seeing such a scene.

I shudder today too thinking of those animal's agony.

Monday, September 22, 2008

CHILLI THIEVES


I have heard of people stealing everything that is valuable but it was only in Madras that I have seen people stealing dry chillies , and that too in broad daylight in the most ingenious manner.

The stolen chilli pods were kept by the chilli thieves in a place where even God would not think that they would conceal.

My house on Audiappa street had a veranda like space which was used by people to take rest and generally served as a rest area for tired coolies and labourers.After my return to Madras from my village in Gujarat, I used to look after our family business conducted from the ground floor and I could see people sitting or resting in the veranda.

Come January and new crop of chilli peppers used to start flowing in the chilli market. The people who carried the huge jute bags full of Chilli pods came in the afternoon to rest. One day, I noticed a labourer walking in the resting place and he looked around if anyone was watching . Suddenly he lifted his Lungi and I noticed a huge bulging "Komanam"(Langot which is an underwear ) .This male modesty saver had another compartment which can fill upto a couple of pounds of chili pods.

This man calmly removed his underwear and emptied Mundu chillies in a paper bag, put back his long Komanam and walked off.!!
He never even flinched when his body contact with these fiery little button chillies would have burned him in loins . I think that working for years together handling fiery chillies had made him immune to any discomfort. I came to know that employees did not do a body check at below the belt level and these labourers who mostly hailed from Ramanathpuram district had fashioned and perfected an ingenious modus operendi to steal chillies.

After this first encounter, I saw similar thefts all through the season year after year till we vacated the place in 1968.

I would be posting some more about these Chilli pepper handling coolies and their usage of chillies for some cruelest animal abuse. But that would be later.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

I am a Spicy Man because....."I was born in Chilli market"


When I sit back and think about the reasons for my being so much attracted to Spices , I used to think that I had taken after my mother who loved all spicy foods but I was still not convinced if love for spices has a common gene.

It struck to me suddenly that the reason lies in the fact "Where I come from".

I was born on a cold day early morning in January first week 58 years ago in the city of Madras.


what is so special about that day?

Nothing.

What is so special about the place?

Well nothing except the fact that My love for Sambar may have something to do with that.
But still it does not justify my first question.

Today morning it came as a flash.
I was born at my home at 27 Audiappa Naicken Street, George town, Madras.
And this house lies 50 feet away from special market which deals only in Chilli peppers or if you want to call it Chillies, I am OK with it. (later on it also became a wholesale market for Garlic.)

My house where I was born was practically plumb at the hubbub of one of the largest chilli market in South India. The market is called "Mozka Kadai Sandhu" meaning Chilli shop street.
Actually this is a narrow street housing hundreds of wholesalers of fiery to slightly milder dry chillies. Chief among the varieties being sannam , Madras Pari and Mundu. Huge godowns of chilli peppers are situated in this street.

From the time I took my first breath in this world, I was thrown open to this spicy atmosphere of chillies. My first visuals of street life would have been huge hand carts and animal driven "Trucks" laden with huge Jute bags filled to bursting with dry chillies.
The same scene is repeated throughout the year, year after year .
I remember my eyes would burn and my little nose would run whenever the trucks and hand carts would pass near our house. And mind you, every day hundreds of them would pass from there. Our house used to literally smell like a chili pepper warehouse.
My little nose became large nose and little boy became an young man in same place.But the non stop passage of fiery red chilli peppers goes on and on unstopped .

This may be the reason why I understand chili peppers better than most people.

I would hasten to add here that it is not only the fiery chillies that were traded here. Varda Muthiappan street, Anna Pillai street, Audiappa Naicken street, Strotten Muthiah Mudali street, Thatha Muthiappan street and Kothaval Chawadi comprised of an area within a city block in US terms and this area housed all wholesale and retail trade in Spices, cereals and Rice. Kotwal chawadi was south India's biggest vegetable wholesale and retail market.So my love of spices can be traced to the atmosphere (literally) prevalent in my house.