Why are you so spicy, but you can't help it
Why do the cantonese people say, "no spicy, no food," and the cantonese people drink cold tea with mints
Why can't they find chili in ming dynasty's sakada, and chiang dynasty has written, "donton is out of control, otherwise the abdomen will swell like drums"
Paprika, the red hero who has occupied the chinese table for nearly 400 years, is actually a complete “immigrant”. It does not have chinese identity cards, but it knows chinese stomachs better than many indigenous crops; it is not born in china, but it is deeply involved in the revolution of migration, border development and diet since the dawn of light. Today, we leave aside the surface experience of “spicy enough” to “eat more and more”, and from the five dimensions of botany, historical geography, neuroscience, chinese medicine and the food industry, the system dismantles hard-core cold knowledge that is not necessarily known to senior spicy people — it is not a food tweet, but a “interdisciplinary field report” on chili。
First, it is not a “chinese origin”, but the most successful “cultural pouring” case in the era of great navigation
While there are more than 30 of them globally, there are only five widely cultivated, more than 95 per cent of them one year old. Its home country is central america, and genetic sequences confirm that all modern cultivation of chili is from wild populations in oaxaca, mexico. In 2014, archaeologists found pepper starch in the twacan valley in mexico 6100 years ago, the first evidence of human use to date。
The point of time when chili had entered china had long been mistakenly considered to be qingyu. In 2021, however, in a piece of pottery from the song yuan pier site in fujian quan province, pepper metabolites were detected - bringing chili pepper forward to southern song (12th century). However, it was only a sporadic product, and the real scale cultivation began in the middle of kang hee's (approximately 1680s): one “pipi tea track” in the cloudy highlands and another “thai sea road” landing through the tide port. Interestingly, the transmission routes of chili in china are highly resonated with large-scale migrations such as qing dynasty and guangzhou. Immigrants travel through the mountains with dry pepper seeds and find that when new homes are abandoned, peppers are infertile, disease-resistant, acre production is more than a pound, and can stay in the sun for two years - – for those who are less salted and less oiled, it is both a deodorant and a source of vitamin c (fruit vc content is twice as high as oranges), a natural deworming agent (pricotin can kill parasitic eggs), and even an emergency powder (civil dry pepper ash for wounds)。
Spicy isn't a taste. It's a survival alert that the brain is tricked out
This is the most subversive point of common sense: there is no "spicy receptor" in the tongue. Sweet, acid, bitter, salty, fresh five basic tastes, identified by a specific g-protein cortex; and “spicy”, a direct combination of capsaicin with the tpv1 ion channel at the nerve end - the channel should have been opened only at >43°c or ph<5. 9 equivalent to a “high temperature/high acid alarm” for the body. The chili triggers it, and the nerve sends a false alarm to the brain: "fire! So you're sweating, you're snotting, you're beating your heart -- it's not enjoyable, it's physical stress。
More precisely, this “acheful pleasure” has a clear evolutionary meaning: endorphins activate reward circuits in pain while at the same time creating a similar post-motion pleasure. And that's why the chronic spicy-eaters stop to react: anxiety, diet, disillusionment - that's why they stop eating. The 2019 nature neuroscience confirmed that, after four weeks of continuous consumption of chili, the volatilized dopamine release in mice rose by 37 per cent, partly overlapping with the nicotine mechanism (of course, the dose is a million times lower than the need to panic)。
The chinese doctor had collectively misjudged it for 300 years until famine forced it to re-accredit
At the time of lee's writing of the draft (completed in 1593), pepper had not yet entered the mainstream view and was not recorded. Qingyu medical practitioners regard it as “poppy-like, sex-like”. According to kanlong, “piprika, commonly known as sea pepper sexual heat, haemorrhoids, injury to the eye and injury to the lungs of a doctor.” many county governors have issued a ban on seeds on the grounds that they are “absorption of blood and prone to disease”。
The turning point was during the carnival (1796-1820). In the south-west, dry locusts and wheat harvests are lost, while peppers can be produced under rocks, slopes and roofs. At the time, the political minister of guizhou, minister of state, made the following statement: “there is no hunger left for the people of the country who have been killed by the porcupines, sweet potatoes and peppers.” with the tacit consent of the court, the area under pepper cultivation rose sharply by 400 per cent over a decade. By the time of the day, the assessment had become: “piprika, the cold, the cold, the cold, the grass, and the mountain people who depend on it”
Modern certification coincides with an alarming match: chili can boost the flow of gastro-molecular blood and promote osteo-protea enzyme; its volatilizer inhibits the fungus fungus (the main cause of gastrophositis); it is more a fat soluble antioxidant in chili, protecting the vascular interior - the so-called “sex heat and vagina”, which is the metabolic imbalance caused by over-eating vitamin a/c population in ancient times, rather than by the chili itself。
Iv. You eat spicy, probably 90% from the lab, not chili fields
According to a 2023 sample by the chinese textiles association, only 12 per cent of the marketed chili sauce is labelled as “pure chili fermentation”; 63 per cent is added “creas oil resin” (precipitine concentrate); and another 25 per cent is used for “synthetic chili analogue” (e. G., non-nazedin derivatives) at a cost of only 1/20 for natural extraction. Even more subtle is the "spicy-enhanced technology": adding 0. 3% l-silic acid (extension of hairy blood vessels) to the spicy sauce, which increases the spicy sense strength by a factor of 2. 1; adding trace ethanol (0. 8% vol) and accelerating neural penetration by dissolved papririn - these processes are in accordance with national standard gb 2760, but are rarely identified。
Real traditional spicy, is the art of time. The fermentation of the cyanide peppers is 28 days long, producing gamma-aminobutyric acid (gaba) to cool the spicy; yunnan chili is ready for use and the aroma gas is kept; and the “spicy” process of crumbing the kettle base is essentially designed to make the papririn and butter triester a molecular combination, both to reduce irritation and to extend the release of the flavor — the supreme wisdom of chinese tasting the spicy。
V. Behind the global spicy competition is an agricultural capital and sensory exploitation
The record of “the world's hottest peppers” has increased 20 times over a decade: from 1. 04 million shus in indian peppers in 2007 to 3. 18 million shus in pepper x in 2023. However, breeding logic has long been alienated: scientists use ems chemical mutagenic + single-direction screening, deliberately amplify the capun1 gene expression in the peprin synthesis route, at the expense of fruit size, sugar and aromatic gas, only for high shu values. Ninety per cent of this type of pepper is fibrogenic, unfeatible, and is used only for the extraction of paprika — 70 per cent of the world's paprika is eventually fed into riot spray and diet capsules。
Ironically, the most sustainable spicy taste comes from “deep development of low spicy varieties”. In yunnan, shu is only 500,000, but is rich in 23 volatile aromatics; in guizhou, the seedlings are “breathed” with only 8,000 spicy, but they contain 17 phenol acids and are resistant to oxidation three times more than blueberries. The real future, not higher, but deeper。
In conclusion, chili is a mirror and sees the resilience of civilization
It reminds us that the so-called “traditions” are nothing more than the best of the former's resource constraints; that so-called “principals” are often born of forced creation; and that so-called “tops” are, in fact, a genuine body vote on survival strategies. When you're next in a bowl of sour soup, think about it. It's red, it's the fire of the mayan priest to the sun, it's the dry pepper from the shipyard of spring county, it's the livelihood of the faithful peasant woman in the mackerel, and it's the neurocode that is being rereaded in today's laboratory。
# chili #
