Spices Keep You Healthy

At some point, after three years in Thailand, I was convinced that science had ignored the health benefits of capsaicin - the part that makes hot peppers so spicy.  Surely, I thought, this heat helped to preserve foods, in a different way than salt does.  

Today this 24 year old paper popped up on Twitter that confirms my assumption.  What I didn't recognize was that garlic and onions are even better at the killing and/or inhibiting the growth of microbes.  Though I did assume the high use of garlic in hot climates had some health benefits too.  

The authors write in the overview:

"We wondered if there are any predictable patterns of spice use and, if so, what factors might underlie them. In this article, we summarize the results of our inquiries. We found that spice use is decidedly nonrandom and that spices have several beneficial effects, the most important of which may be reducing foodborne illnesses and food poisoning."

Prediction 1. Spices should exhibit antibacterial and antifungal activity.

And this chart shows that 

Prediction 2. Use of spices should be greatest in hot climates, where unrefrigerated foods spoil especially quickly.

They looked at cookbooks from 36 countries to see what spices were used, how many recipes included spices, how many spices per recipe, and which spices.  The used a climate atlas to rate the climate in each of the 36 countries. 

Prediction 3. A greater proportion of bacteria should be inhibited by recipes from hot climates than from cool climates.  

". . . the mean fraction of recipes that called for each one of the highly inhibitory spices used in those countries increased significantly (Figure 8a). However, this correlation did not hold for less inhibitory spices (Figure 8b). There was also a positive relationship between the fraction of bacterial species inhibited by each spice and the fraction of countries that used that spice, indicating widespread use of the spices that are most effective against bacteria."

There are a number of other things they looked into (ie. cost of spices, lemon/lime juice increases anti-microbial power of spices).  

So one question I have relates to the fact that our bodies rely on microbes to keep us healthy.  My awareness of this came well after 1999 (when the spice article was published) and I'm not sure how well it was known in 1999 or by the authors.  Do spices harm the gut biome?  

The article is written in clear language that should be easy for most people to understand most parts.  It also has pictures of spices as well as straightforward charts.  

Darwinian Gastronomy: Why We Use Spices: Spices taste good because they are good for us 

Paul W. Sherman,   Jennifer Billing  Author Notes  BioScience, Volume 49, Issue 6, June 1999, Pages 453–463, https://doi.org/10.2307/1313553   Published: 01 June 1999

They use' microbe' in some places and 'bacteria' in other places.  Since I wasn't completely sure about what each term meant, I found this American Society for Microbiology page "What Counts As A Microbe?"

You Believe Climate Change Is Real, But Feel Fighting It Is Overwhelming - Well, This Is For You

 I bumped into CCL (Citizens Climate Change) about 10 years ago.  Someone at a table at an event.  He invited me to a monthly meeting.  I didn't realize we would be calling into a national meeting with an incredible guest speaker.  I was hooked.  

Since then I've participated in over 100 such meetings.  The technology has evolved from speaker phone to live video.  CCL has gone from 40-some US chapters to 476 and 602 international chapters since that first meeting.

Today's meeting featured Alex Posner, organizer of S4CD (Students for Carbon Dividend).  Alex first talks about the organization and who's involved - student body presidents from across the US, spanning the racial, gender, and ideological spectrums.  All supporting legislation to set up a carbon fee and dividend program as a major step to reducing carbon in the atmosphere.  It's the key focus of CCL as well.  

They're so well organized that the video of the meeting has been up a couple of hours already and so I've embedded it below.

The first 3:53 minutes of the video is CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds introducing today's meeting and Alex Posner.

Then Alex talks about the S4CD and gives a great list of 10 Strategies and Techniques for organizing. Finally, a few questions.  This ends about 27 minutes in. Then Alex performs a magic trick with lots of relevant symbolism.  Then there is ten more minutes of meeting.  

After that the Alaska Chapter met in a different zoom call, with special guest Robin Ronen talking about environmental justice issues - particularly the climate change forced move of the village of Newtok.  

I do encourage you to watch/listen to the video.  Take your mind off of COVID and the elections and see that people are continuing their efforts, through all this, to fight climate change.  It could give you hope.  It's the most efficient and effective and decent organization I've ever encountered.  

If you want to see if there is a CCL chapter near you (there is) you can see the list of US and International chapters here.  I promise you that not only will you be able to help slow down climate change, but you'll meet some really interesting and warm folks.  (There are four chapters in Kentucky, nine in Iowa, over 20 in Ontario, CA, nine in Nigeria.)

Understanding Privilege - When Christmas Parade Becomes Winter Parade, It's a War On Christianity

Privilege is such a loaded word.  No one wants to believe they have 'privilege' that others don't.  At least not undeserved privilege.  People want to believe that they worked for their advantages.  But this case gives an example of how privilege works and also how those with it don't even know it.

From Friday's NYTimes.

So the newish mayor of Charleston, West Virginia wanted to make the holiday event more inclusive.  So the annual Christmas parade was announced this year as the Winter Parade.

The reaction was swift  and negative and within 72 hours, Charleston had its Christmas Parade once more.

Who Supported The Mayor?
The high school band coach, whose music only included secular music like Jingle Bells
The rabbi
The Muslim community

Why Is This Privilege?

I hope I can use this situation to help explain what 'privilege' looks like.  In this case it's most directly Christian privilege.

Here are some of the reactions quoted in the article:

1. “The new mayor needs to be voted out if she does away with the Christmas parade,” read one comment on the initial Facebook post. 
2. “Christmas is all about Christ, not some winter parade.”
3. A local lawyer and newspaper columnist, Mark Sadd, said he didn’t understand why the mayor needed to show the city as more welcoming. It wasn’t like there were a lot of complaints.
4. “A Christmas parade is about as inclusive as we can get,” he said.
5. Some people thought renaming the parade was an attack on Christianity and traditions held dear in a city of 48,000 that feels more like a small town.“

1.  The new mayor needs to be voted out if she does away with the Christmas parade,” read one comment on the initial Facebook post. 

Well, the parade had not been "done away with."  The only change was the name.  I'd note here, that as a government, Charleston should not sponsor and pay for events that celebrate one particular set of  religious beliefs.  A group of private citizens, a church or collection of churches, could sponsor a Christmas parade, but not a government entity.  (There's a lot of First Amendment law on this.)

In some future (I used to think in some reachable future, but not any more) where everyone respects everyone else's background and religion equally with their own, I don't think this would be an issue.  But in the US where Muslims and Jews (particularly) are being targeted for abuse because of their religion, this is definitely not the time for a government to favor the majority religion over others.  

2.   “Christmas is all about Christ, not some winter parade.

Exactly.  And this is why the government shouldn't be sponsoring such a parade.  And a number of Christians don't like the secularization of Christmas caused by turning it over to commercial interests and government interpretation.  

3.  A local lawyer and newspaper columnist, Mark Sadd, said he didn’t understand why the mayor needed to show the city as more welcoming. It wasn’t like there were a lot of complaints.

And this is why I'm labeling this privilege.  Christians, particularly Christians who live and have always lived in a predominantly Christian community, tend not to even understand how a "Christmas Parade" isn't welcoming to say,  Jews or Muslims, or Hindus or any other non-Christians. Christmas is such a warm and fuzzy holiday, how can anyone be offended?  (Look back up to #2)  That kind of ignorance is part of the privilege.  Living in a setting where your own point of view is not only coming from your family, but is echoed at school, and overall in the community IS the very definition of privilege.  

• The privilege of having your world view echoed everywhere you go.  
• The privilege of not having to pay attention to, let alone understand, people who disagree with you.  
• The privilege of having your religious view supported by your government.  (Like swearing on a bible to take office.)
• The privilege of being able to protect that privilege when it is threatened. (As when religious Christmas is replaced with the secular Winter).  
• The privilege of not even knowing that any of this is not 'the natural way it is' but rather a privilege that others don't share.  
• The privilege of  believing that those who don't share your view shouldn't share your privilege.  
• The privilege of being so powerful that no one else even dares complain.  ("It wasn't like there were a lot of complaints.")

4.  “A Christmas parade is about as inclusive as we can get,” he said.

Dear Hindus and Muslims and Jews, welcome to your own city's "Christmas Parade."  You're welcome to join us celebrating Jesus Christ with your taxes, but don't ask for the city to sponsor a similar parade celebrating your religions.  Inclusive?

5.  Some people thought renaming the parade was an attack on Christianity and traditions held dear in a city of 48,000 that feels more like a small town.

And this is the ultimate of privilege here - leveling the playing field so that no religion is favored with tax payer money over any other religion is seen as "an attack on Christianity."  No one here is attacking Christianity, only that taxpayers are supporting it.  

The privilege is believing that one is entitled to a privilege and when that privilege is taken away in the interests of fairness and equity, it is 'an attack on Christianity."  

People with 'privilege' rarely feel privileged.  They may even get insulted when others without their privilege (of skin color, religion, sex) having more benefits than they have.  What is critical here is when someone's privilege, such as skin color, religion, or gender or sexual orientation is backed up by institutional structures - laws, courts, algorithms (red-lining was just an algorithm for how to give housing loans, well before that word was used to describe formulas for computerized decision-making).

And recognizing one's privilege seems about as hard as recognizing any other kind of addiction.  Some people get it quickly and can give up smoking or alcohol without much trouble.  Others have a much harder time of getting past denial.  Giving up privilege, though, isn't an individual decision.  It's about dismantling the structures that give certain skin colors, religions, genders, etc. governmental and societal advantage (or disadvantage.)  

Basically, I think most of the Trump true-believers are addicted to their white, Christian, male privilege.  Because all the other advantages those privileges might have afforded them in the past are slipping away from them.  

The article talks about how change has hurt West Virginia, a state that is still synonymous with coal.  Just think.  These are people who are fighting for the right to work under the horrendous working conditions of coal mines.  Doing what's slowly killing you, for many, is better than facing the uncertainty of change.  This is a monumental failure of our education systems.  But then those who control coal mines don't want their supply of workers to realize they have better and healthier work opportunities in industries that aren't destroying the planet through climate change.