Space up the The Science of Spices!

Consumerism has completely taken over our lives. Supermarkets are hosted in hangars in which one can find oneself lost among the shelves at his first visit. I even saw staff who, due to long end to end distances, run on roller skates to be able to react in due time to customer’s queries or demands. While manufacturers invent newer and newer products and flavours, based on customers’ insights obtained from complex market research studies, customers remained bewildered the amount of choice.

During my MBA studies I learnt about the 5P marketing concept: Product, Price, Placement, Promotion and Packaging. The 5th P, from Packaging, had been recently added. And that diversified the range of products enormously.

Unfortunately there is a downside: the focus on packaging set the tone for the environmental disaster in my view. For merely the same products or a slight variation, the more attractive the packaging, the more customers are attracted to buy it.

In this world that hurries to disaster, how many of us are concerned of the product rather than packaging, the ingredient’s origin or the natural flavours versus industrial flavours?

There are combinations of n taken by n. Moreover, taking into consideration the creativity of the colours and materials, the sky is the limit.

Of course, with regard to the nutrition, the greatest problem is the product, not the package. Who’s thinking today to buy plain yogurt and simply mix it with cinnamon, fruits, nuts or oat flakes and to get a delicious tasty healthy meal? Very few. Because it is not very convenient to plan your meals or to put at stake your creativity. It’s simpler to just grab a fruit yogurt from the shelf.

Everything is at our fingertips.

And this comfort comes together with the lack of choice: I am not going to choose the type, quantity and quality of the ingredients, and I am not the one who chooses the spices. And my tastes are going to be limited to the manufacturer’s proposals. And the comfort goes hand in hand with forgetfulness. We forget, for example, that mushrooms have different textures and fragrances, or nutritional value; instead, we invent a mushroom fragrance. We invent and replace the fragrances of plants, herbs, or even animals. About forgetting – my folks always remind me that the habits of eating sorrel (or garden patience), wild garlic, nettle, dandelion were common in their childhood; and that my grandmothers used saffron to yellow the panettone (in Romanian we call it cozonac) . Good habits lost by industrial "progress" and by population migration from rural to urban.

However, I am not yet pleading against the consumerism, since I am not yet ready to swim against the current. My plea is for balance, learning and knowledge. And I do believe that, if we do this, the industry will take it as a must to adapt to our new requirements.

Recently I have observed some of my colleagues’s patients, diagnosed with high blood pressure or renal or cardiovascular diseases. They also received the recommendation to reduce their salt consumption. And they resisted it, by immediately saying ”no salt, no taste”.

So true, in our ”box”. But thinking outside of the box, one may be surprised of finding in the nature a real symphony of tastes, thanks to aromatic herbs and spices.

What's more, some of them have an anti-inflammatory effect through all sorts of substances.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover a book about spices, written by Dr Stuart Farrimond*. I have learned that there is science behind the range of spices. Intriguingly, the spices are represented in a table like Mendeleev’s table of chemical elements. To parallel the chemical elements representation, each spice was attributed an acronym, for example Anise is An, Liquorice is Lq and Vanilla is Va. Further on, Dr Farrimond classified each spice according to its flavour and attributed light colours to the little boxes they are put in, to show at a glance the groups of spices that match together. However, behind the taste lies the real science. Each spice is analysed for its chemical properties, each of them comprising a lot of substances with therapeutic effects besides their main organoleptic properties and sense stimulation. And there is also an explanation for the presence of these substances in the spices. In their development history the plants tried to protect themselves from being eaten by animals or from being attacked by insects or parasites, and produced all sort of chemicals in their attempt.

These chemicals are deposited in different parts of the plant. For example: in the leaves of mint, sage, parsley, and tarragon, in the roots of turmeric or garlic, in the stem of cinnamon tree, or in the plants of pepper, or in the seeds of anise, or the flower of clove.

Humans are so lucky to not even tolerate these substances, but merely to benefit from them.

The author presents the origin of spices and makes some comments about the cultural habits of different regions. Among them, Eastern Europe doesn’t seem to have a culinary culture enriched by spices, and enumerates pepper, chilli pepper and cinnamon as the most widespread ones.

I would argue that in Romania we are not as limited as presented in the book. On the other hand, as I was showing earlier, we could revive some good old culinary habits and we could also seek to adopt spices from other cultures. Want some reasons to do that? Firstly, for the organoleptic pleasure that leads to becoming less dependent on salt and sugar; secondly, due to their chemical compounds, some spices’ ingestion has an anti-inflammatory outcome, as in the case of turmeric; thirdly, it can be fun but also cognitively useful to study about spices.

?To cook without spices is like composing an orchestral opus without a string section; cooks who view spicing as a grind of black pepper or a spoon of curry powder need to embrace the richness that spices can offer.”*

That being said, we can immediately move to some practical tips, for a more fragrant life.

In the morning I prefer to add to my coffee a knife tip of turmeric, a bit of ground ginger, cinnamon, and some vegetable milk. Some call this recipe “turmeric-latte”, with some variation in amounts or ingredients.

I learned about a winter tea recipe, and I intend to prepare it. It’s with black tea, anise, clove, cinnamon, honey, and the recipe can be found at this link?https://thelostherbs.com/winter-miracle-tea/

Some evidence suggests that sage has antiseptic properties and some people use a sage infusion to gargle for preventing periodontitis or to alleviate a sore throat.?Turmeric is thought to have anti-inflammatory properties, anise to be efficient in treating menopausal symptoms, and cinnamon could be useful in diabetes mellitus to lower the blood glucose. But all these effects must be taken into consideration alone only in the primary prevention. For secondary prevention most likely, your doctor will prescribe the necessary medicines or other therapeutic interventions, and herbs and spices are to be taken into consideration as a very valuable aid.?

And remember, whenever you need a medically qualified personal consultant for lifestyle changes, or a medically qualified company consultant to assess and advise your employees regarding primary prevention by adopting a healthy lifestyle, please contact me at [email protected]

I am not going to end this article before I urge you to discover, as described by Dr Farrimond, the sweet waring phenols of clove and fennel, the warming terpenes of the nutmeg, the woody spiciness of the cumin, the sweet-sourness of the carob, the fruity aldehydes of the sumac, the citrus terpenes of the lemongrass, and the unique compounds, earthy, mellow, penetrating or herby saffron and turmeric...

For a healthy life, space up the science of spices!

Which herbs and spices do work for you? Please leave a comment bellow.

*The Science of Spice, Understanding flavours connections revolutionize your cooking, Dr Stuart Farrimond

Tatiana Popescu, the author of this article, is a medical doctor, specialized in family practice, with an extensive experience in management (pharmaceutical and medical device industry, medical services), Executive-MBA graduate, ELMO Lifestyle Medicine advisor since 2019, the creator of the new brand DrLifestyle (the doctor that keeps you away from doctors) - registered trade mark since 2021.

DrLifestyle (the doctor that keeps you away from doctors) delivers medical education services for primary and secondary prevention, medical coaching and mentoring, and B2B programs for the organisations, aiming to assess employees's lifestyle and assist them in taking decisions to change it for a better health status. The foreseen outcomes of the programs are changes on the 6 pillars: feet, fork, fingers, sleep, stress, cognitive and social interaction development, thus leading to better focus, increased job performance, strengthen collaboration, higher resilience, better stress management, healthier, happier employees.