I’ve heard before that this might be explained as: people who eat chilies tend to eat a greater variety of food (more vegetables) than people who don’t (meat and potatoes - they have their place, but should not be your go-to meal).
Good Indian food, for example, is very easy to enjoy vegetarian, as the explosion of flavors makes up for the lack of meat.
I like the term part-time vegetarian. As a full-time vegetarian and part-time vegan, it has always been difficult to correct the confusion caused by people that say they're vegetarian and then eat fish or something similar.
Part time is great. I'm part time vegan (probably 90% of my meals), but I still rarely have meat, dairy, everything. I dislike the idea that if you aren't always vegan/vegetarian you've "failed". Like it's some religion that if you ever strayed you have some mark against you. It's so much easier to go 90% than 100, and I bet many more people would be willing to go 90% than 100%. We'll make major strids to improving the environment, improving our populations health, and improving the well being of animals if a majority of people have a goal of 90% rather than full removal.
Even just getting people to go mostly chicken over beef has a big impact. This also creates a way to ease into a more plant based diet.
Personally I've found the 90% aspect easier. I don't have to worry if my vegetarian meals have something like chicken stock in them. It is about eating healthier and a lower carbon diet than being 100% perfect. Just needs to be good enough.
Depends on the reason behind being vegan / vegetarian. If it's to reduce animal suffering, eating chicken is almost certainly causing a greater amount of animal suffering than if you eat cows.
I find the approach of the cited web page very strange. Basically, it says, the longer the animal lives, the more it suffers. Throws in some arbitrary multipliers, divides by mass, and voilà.
I would not call healthy animal life as suffering. Details matter. We all have seen peaceful cows and healthy fish. What counts, IMO, is fear, stress, pain, and the way animals are dying. That's not accounted in the article.
One may argue that the number of lives taken counts too. And then eating beef or whale meat will kill fewer animals than eating chicken or insects (of we don't count what whales eat). But in my opinion eating insects would cause less suffering.
Overall I think that eating smaller animals more frequently is more natural and oppotunistic. And eating cheaper meat will reduce overall carbon and water footprint.
From the welfare perspective, if the cows are just out in a large pasture, they will likely have net-positive experiences across their lives. But there are animals that have overwhelmingly negative experience throughout their lives (pigs confined to a cage where they can't turn around). As for chickens, >99% of which grow up in cramped conditions, with no access to the outside, with selective breeding causing them to grow so fast they often can't move, it is better to never have been (their lives are a net negative experience).
It's unfortunate, with respect to emissions, cows are worse than chickens, but with respect to suffering on sentient creatures, chickens are worse than cows.
Great news! There's a solution: eating fewer of both.
What about pescatarian (sp?)? I like the idea of ditching dependence on land based animals. Is sane tilapia farming sustainable? I have a fairly strong intolerance for beans and pulses and getting enough protein to deadlift from other sources is hard. The best my blood work has ever been was me eating about 1.3lbs of grassfed beef a day plus greens and 4 sweet potatoes. Thats great, but not sustainable for our whole population.
Commercial fishing at modern scale is not sustainable. Fish farming, especially for valuable species, still has a huge carbon footprint, requires a non trivial amount of agricultural land, and often uses wild-caught fish to feed the farm. So we're back to square one.
Not saying that the issues can't be solved, but pisciculture is not a free lunch from the sustainability point of view.
> Fish farming, especially for valuable species, still has a huge carbon footprint, requires a non trivial amount of agricultural land, and often uses wild-caught fish to feed the farm. So we're back to square one.
Isn't most of that only true for carnivorous or omnivorous fish? I knew there were problems with finding small fish to feed the bigger fish, but I was under the impression that herbivores and filter feeders could be raised sustainably. I.e. farming tuna would be extremely difficult and costly to the environment, but you can farm things like tilapia and catfish fairly sustainably.
They aren't fish that a lot of people are excited to eat, unfortunately.
My favorites are baitfish like herring and sardines does that change the sustainability? If not, should I just go back to beef, or is it at least better?
I'm an omnivoire, but can't you get a lot of vegan protein from chickpeas and soy? Soy does have the obvious huge downside of containing a much higher amount of estrogen and causes havoc in some people, but Chickpeas aren't hard to make delicious. Ditto for lentils as well
> Chickpeas aren't hard to make delicious. Ditto for lentils as well
Yes. Check out my other comment about beans in this thread. All the dishes I mentioned there are pretty tasty. And so are lentils, if by that you meant masoor or masoor dal, or even if you meant tuar dal). And all those are high in protein as you say.
I love Indian curries, but one serving obbeans or pulses will haunt me for a couple days. I don't know if it is sibo related, but I do have that. Cauliflower, blackberries, and mushrooms destroy me too.
And honestly, animals will play an important role in sustainable agriculture, so animal products will still be part of our lives. I was watching a presentation about soil health by a farmer. They don't use fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, etc because of a system of cover crops, free range animals, and mob grazing(a dense herd moved through the field quickly to trample and poop all over) to build healthy soil. The problems we have are from factory farms, monocultures, and destroying old growth ecosystems so more people can consume in excess, instead of moderation.
> I dislike the idea that if you aren't always vegan/vegetarian you've "failed".
In the case you're vegan because you think it's unethical to kill for food, why should you get a break here? I can't think of other ethical issues where you wouldn't be looked down for going against your firmly held beliefs.
"Mostly plant-based diet" sounds like a better term if you're less concerned about the animal suffering aspect. Vegan would also include not wearing leather for example so it might be a case of you not using the right word.
There are strong arguments for this. Alcoholics have support groups to keep themselves accountable, but also when they do relapse to help get them back on track. Having a firmly held belief doesn't mean you're immune to temptation or are unforgivable if you have a lapse. Moreover the kind of criticism and shaming that comes from not giving people "a break" does two things 1. It lowers the power of the shamer to make real change in a persons life and 2. It can cause exactly the kind of depression that leads to more of the undesirable behavior.
If you really think killing animals for food is wrong (if that's the reason you're vegan), doing it just a little bit shouldn't be okay to you and shows you weren't really that serious in the first place.
I wouldn't try to shame someone with a drug addiction but I don't think this is anything similar. What would you say to someone who said they were going to give up plastic straws but gave in and still used them once a week for example? There's certain cases where strong disapproval is more valid and you can't blame lack of self control so much.
I'd argue giving people too much of a break doesn't help either.
I think a big part about why people can't give up meat is that they're surrounded by people telling them it's okay. There's people that know meat is bad for climate change and know killing animals is wrong but won't reduce their meat eating because they see people around them are complacent too.
I'd be interested to see some evidence that promoting the "baby steps" approach is the right one because it could easily be making it worse.
And I disagree with the leather part because leather production isn’t causing animals to be killed. It’s a by product of the, mostly beef industry. It would take a massive decline in beef production to cause cows to be killed purely for their leather. Leather goods also last decades.
I believe more in a overall balance. You can’t get everyone to be vegan, the earth simply can’t support that.
You can’t get everyone to be vegan, the earth simply can’t support that.
Genuinely curious, why can't Earth support everyone eating vegan? I thought it took more land, water, soil, and resources in general to produce meat? Is it about transportation, or Arctic climates where fresh fruit and veg is not available?
It's always going to be more efficient to feed grain, soy etc. directly to humans than it is to feed those crops to cows then feed cow meat and milk to humans (you lose about 90% of the crop calories creating beef: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio). People arguing the opposite are usually under the false impression that cows are only fed grass (there's no enough room for this for the amount of cows we need) or arguing corner cases.
You're supporting and putting more money into the beef industry by buying leather though. You don't kill cows directly by buying milk either, but the milked cow will eventually be slaughtered for meat too and its male offspring used as veal.
> I believe more in a overall balance. You can’t get everyone to be vegan, the earth simply can’t support that.
Fair enough, but "vegan" isn't the term to use to describe your beliefs then.
This is a fantastic way to look at it. It feels like a perfect application of the 80 / 20 rule -> with 20% of the effort, you can get 80% of the benefits of being vegetarian / vegan.
Veganism is not so much about soil health but to put a stop to animal suffering. Once you consider animals as beings who deserve to live, pareto rule does not apply.
Definitely. Not the OP you were replying to, but I love meat of all types. I also love vegetables. I also really like some vegetarian foods. Actually, I just like food, but I can't each much of it at one sitting.
I think the other proposition is that, for whatever reason, there's this push to market vegetarian foods as substitutes to lure in traditional meat eaters rather than putting effort toward convincing them that they're alternatives that taste just as good.
Like bean burgers. I absolutely love bean burgers because regular burgers just don't sit right with me half the time. But I don't treat them as a substitute--I treat them as an alternative that is delicious and unique in its own right AND to be enjoyed as such. I mean, let's be honest: There's so many different varieties of beans, and so many things you can do with them, that even speaking as a meat eater, it's almost impossible to get bored with how many different dishes you can make (with no meat)!
One example that comes to mind that's semi-vegetarian is a black bean enchilada recipe I make from time to time. Just beans. Only non-vegetarian item is the cheese (and sometimes the corn tortillas because of lard, if you get them fresh). Doesn't feel heavy, tastes amazing, and it's super filling. Have a side of refried beans (I like beans)[1], Spanish rice, a salad, and it's like a restaurant-style meal.
Err. Didn't mean to make this reply so long. Sorry. I guess I just love cooking, too.
And yes, it's not that much effort to at least cut out red meat from your diet. Way healthier too.
[1] The people around you probably won't like the side effects.
If by your [1] you mean flatulence, Indians (and some other Asians) eat many kinds of legumes (including many kinds of beans, like rajma, lobia, French beans, etc.), on a regular basis, and I, at least, have not heard of flatulence as a common thing among them due to that. Only if you indulge a bit too much in say chana (chickpeas, as in chana masala or puri chole or bhature chole), do you sometimes get gas. Possibly the Indian masala's spices used in those dishes help with digesting the beans, in fact they probably do, since they are the common ones used in Indian cooking, some of which have known digestive benefits, such as cumin, ginger, coriander, asafoetida, etc.
(BTW, tip: just a pinch of asafoetida a.k.a. hing, really improves a dish; the zing of hing :)
Also, I saw a video about nutrition by some scientist, who said that peoples (i.e. nations) who eat beans regularly, develop, over time, the ability (maybe via better gut flora) to digest them more easily, without gas being generated.
I suspect your points (all of them!) probably harbor some degree of truth--in particular the latter. I don't eat beans quite often enough to notice any long term benefits, but I do know that if I eat certain fibrous foods with increasing frequency, the effects become milder over time. So I would imagine the gut flora adapts to your diet, if you're willing to work at it.
I may have to try the suggestion of different spices. I'm exceedingly fond of cumin and season my bean enchiladas accordingly, but I've never thought to try an experiment involving consumption of the same amount of beans with or without. This may warrant further investigation.
I appreciate the feedback. It gives me some things to try since, well, I just love all manner of seasonings. Thank you so much for that!
> Glad you think the points are worth checking out.
Well, of course! Physiological "hacks" like that which are largely something already known in other cultures and subsequently re-discovered in the West always fascinate me. It's a good reminder that there are a LOT of things we don't know (or think we do).
Plus, I enjoy the conversation even if the topic (flatulence) is somewhat less appealing (or amusing). I've always had some digestive issues with too much fiber and certain foods, but it never really bothered me all that much until the last few years. Onions, for whatever stupid reason, seem to bother me the worst. Which is a shame, because I love them.
But, I'm definitely going to try your suggestions. Plus I've been itching to try cumin in something new, AND you've given me a list of other things to add to my arsenal. Living in New Mexico, there's only so many things you can do with hot peppers before you start to look toward other cuisines (kidding; I love them as well!). :)
You also reminded me of something. When you mentioned a slow tolerance toward certain foods, I'd forgotten that a few years ago I went through this phase where I was eating steel cut oats every day. I tried it again recently and they absolutely bothered me to no end (err, phrasing), yet I don't remember that being an issue when it was a regular part of my diet. I know it's only anecdotal evidence, but I swear they didn't bother me before. Of course, this comes on the heels of discovering that an Instant Pot is absolutely beautiful for cooking them consistently.
Anyway, thank you so much for the advice--and the conversation. I'm sorry I hadn't replied for close to 2 weeks!
You might want to investigate Dr Vasant Lad's videos (2 in number, IIRC) on Ayurvedic cooking in particular, and the principles, or at least techniques, of (spices and masalas used in) Indian cooking in general. All with a view to improved digestion. He is a senior Ayurvedic doctor and the founder of the Ayurvedic Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. There is also a book about this subject (the cooking), by some woman, IIRC, but sorry, cannot remember the name.
IME, flatulence is 90% attributable to eating more than the digestive system can comfortably handle at a time, also some questionable food combos and gut flora may be involved, but mostly the former. Glossing over specifics, a conservative well digestible meal size would be up to 300g or 1/3 l, no less than 3h apart, no fruit, sugary drinks or milk. Gradually relax constraints and monitor side effects.
Interesting points, thanks. Related to meal size, yoga (via a book by The Yoga Institute) says at the end of a meal, your stomach contents should be one half food, one quarter water and one quarter air, for good digestion, which seems to make sense, intuitively, because if it was all food, it would be a tight fit, so would not move around and through the digestive system easily, and the same (though less so) if full with only food and water, hence the air bit too.
The Yoga Institute may be the oldest commercial yoga center in the world.
Re [1]. Same with me. On the input side, I could exist solely on rice and beans. However, on the output side, my body just won't cooperate and generates a very foul output. So meat and veggies it is. :-(
Judging by the sibling comments, it would appear there may be more natural ways around that which seem to improve digestion. I'm going to have to try their suggestions at some point.
But I don't know. Could it be a physiological thing? Maybe. I know that I have a bit of, err, sensitivity to certain foods that seem to transform me into a source of natural gas.
Thanks! Yeah my wife and I stared over a year ago. If you had told me 2 years ago if I would be mostly vegan I would have laughed.
80/20 is a great way to look at it. It cuts out all of the food where you just get chicken or beef and it doesn’t actually add to the meal. Now I opt for vegan choices, but if I’m in a place that makes really great meat options, usually with high quality product, I’ll get one and really appreciate it. Makes meat an actual treat. Though the less meat I have the less I actually want it.
I have a friend that is mostly a vegetarian because he thinks a) the meat industry is often cruel. b) very destructive environmentally.
I'm okay with that. I don't eat veal or fish for the same reasons[1]. Veal is cruel. And fishing is horribly destructive. Where someone draws a line isn't as important as they do.
[1] Don't get me started though with Hippie Brahmans that won't eat chicken or beef but eat fish for 'heath reasons'
I also wish people would stop thinking of vegetarianism as a black-and-white concept. Moreover, the people who are quickest to point out that "you're not really vegetarian" are the ones who eat meat regularly :(
Especially for someone who is vegetarian to reduce carbon emissions, 90%, 95%, and 100% aren't that different, and hell even 50% is a tremendous reduction especially if it means that it's easier to convince 5 people to do 50% than 1 person to do 100%.
Occasional indulgence was never the problem for the environment, and people should know that's okay to occasionally indulge, it doesn't need to be black and white.
Indeed. I'm not a big fan of militant vegetarianism/veganism. I think it creates a barrier to entry. It's one of the reasons that a lot of products now describe themselves as 'plant-based' rather than vegan.
As someone who grew up vegetarian, things have changed drastically in the last 30 years. I grew up eating some truly niche meat-replacement products[1][2].
Things like 'Impossible Burgers' and 'Beyond Meat' have changed the experience significantly. There is still a long way to go, and it's not just about taste, but also nutrition. However it has made it much more appealing to use those alternatives, and reduce the use of meat.
My own vegetarian/vegan mix is also occasionally broken when people don't know that I'm vegetarian, and serve meat. I have long decided not to make a scene. One of my of ex-colleagues never found out I'm vegetarian, because of an incident where they invited everyone out to dinner and it turned out to be at a fancy sushi restaurant (share-plates, yay).
When talking to others I urge them to see, like I do, a long continuum between eating 100% only meat and consuming 0% of animal products. I recommend people reflect on their values (causing pollution and animal suffering) and aim to decrease consumption of animal products to whatever level they are comfortable with. It can be a long process, and we all should be more supportive in helping people align their actions with their values.
Needless to say these kinds of conversations are better when the person is receptive and interested, not when you first meet them.
Sure, this is one solution. But I suspect the 'culprits' use vegetarian because pescatarian isn't a well known term and invites more questions than it answers.
Vegetarian sums up a large chunk of their preferences, even if it isn't accurate.
If people just use the right word, and when someone asks "what does that mean?" they tell them, this exchange of 5 seconds is enough to bring awareness, if everyone who is a pescatarian took that short moment.
Don't be me - at work c. 2001 - heard about a colleague who was "vegetarian" but ate fish and sometimes chicken... I wanted to create a pseudo-scientific name for this way of eating. I was thinking something along the lines of eats some meat but predominantly vegetarian.
So I opened up google and typed "Latin meat" - the results did not translate to the latin for meat!
Could you not refer to as a "Part-time" vegetarian who eats fish as simple a Pescatarian? My sister tried the fully vegan diet for a year and ended up with a lot of health problems. So she now will eat eggs from her neighbor (who raises the chickens responsibly and free range) along with fish for the omega threes and iron.
Yep, agreed. The problem, minor though it is, is that there are a bunch of people that should refer to themselves as Pescatarian, but don't.
I suspect that they refer to themselves as vegetarians because it's simpler and encapsulates a large chunk of their preferences. It just causes confusion when they go to the waiter. "I'm vegetarian....Oh, I'll have the fish"
In any case I was simply trying to explain why I liked the 'part-time' thing.
This is similar to me. I prefer to eat vegan, but won't be absolutist about it when i'm eating out or if someone gives me food for free. Now i describe my diet as "aspirationally vegan".
Both great terms. I think I will borrow them for my own use.
I definitely struggle most with the cheeses. I've never really been a big milk drinker, and growing up (both parents are vegetarian) I disliked eggs, so almost never ate them if I could taste them.
I've tried a bunch of the vegan cheeses and they just don't scratch the itch. I live in hope though.
The cuisine that comes to mind when I think of spicy food is Korean. Koreans basically eat something spicy every meal in the form of kimchi, and sometimes eat extremely spicy meals. I've heard that basically all Koreans have at least mild stomach inflammation because of this. Koreans also eat quite a lot of meat, using the spiciness of kimchi to clean their palate. I wonder if the health effects can be seen in the Korean population, or if the probiotics in the kimchi will confound the results.
As a korean myself, I can say that kimchi is not really considered “spicy” to Koreans. It just happens to have chili peppers. When Koreans talk about spicy food, it’s the spiciness level of something like bulldak (spicy chicken) that has a lot more spicy ingredients. In relation to effects on health from eating a lot of spicy food, I don’t think you will find much in studying Koreans. Korean food is notoriously famous for being salty (especially soups that most Koreans eat daily) and a lot of Koreans suffer cardiovascular diseases from high blood pressure because of their diet.
On a side note, it’s really kimchi’s acidity that helps with cleaning palate much like Germans’ sauerkraut or Japanese’ pickled ginger (called “gari”) that you eat with sushi.
Lol. Actually the creams and butters are the healthy part of Indian food (assuming they are using pure ghee). It is the excessive carbs and vegetable oil fried crap that is the unhealthy part.
The creams and butters are not healthy, they are just healthier than some alternatives. They still create a sludge in your arteries that blood has to pump through.
Excessive is relative. If you burn a lot of carbs working fields or in endurance sports you need the carbs.
Home-cooked Indian food is much less rich than the stuff you’ll find in restaurants. Cream and butter are much more expensive than rice, lentils, and vegetables.
Cream and butter isn't the problem. It's the degree of refinement, and whether or not inexpensive, corner cutting processes are involved throughout the entire chain of production.
Here's your plate of rice. Sans Butter and Cream. Go on, eat death then.
Here in Poland, I know many people who like spicy food but none that are elderly or ill.
When you are at mercy of other people (like being taken care of -- when you have medical condition or are elderly), you eat what you are given and it usually is also consumed by other people and basically vetoed by any one of them.
Think about this: it is very likely you can associate driving expensive cars with good health and less chance of dying of all causes (well... except maybe car accident). Do expensive cars improve health? Or maybe most people need to work to be able to drive expensive car and this means they also do better in their life, have means to deal with medical issues and to have varied diet that people who do not work or have low paying jobs?
I think in most western world eating spicy food is a choice and if you can make that choice and don't have to contend with what other people give you you are already ahead.
- tasty even by itself; can even be eaten without cooking
- fairly good in protein although has less per gram than milk, I think because some is lost in the whey that is discarded; but if you make it yourself (see next point), you can drink the whey or use it in soup stock, or to cook any other dish like like a stew
- easy and fast to make it yourself from just milk and lemon juice
- goes well in many other Indian dishes such as mutter (peas) paneer, alu (potato) paneer, palak (spinach) paneer, mix veg paneer, paneer chilli, paneer bhurji, etc.
Googling should find many recipes for all of these.
No sophistry there. Just mild fun word play, of the hacker and Zen schools kind (which are kindred spirits). Check out Steven Levy's book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (the early chapters), ESR's compilations such as The Unix Koans, the Gateless Gate, etc.
In Indian cuisine there is a huge variety of lentils that are used not only in common everyday vegetable mains but also ground up and served as flour. The variety of flours meant that you generally get a lot more nutrients out of your bread than in traditional wheat based breads.
I am a part time vegetarian as well. Most of the meals I make are vegetarian, some vegan, and I eat some chicken and pork. I do like a cheeseburger every now and then too. My main protein sources are beans and eggs. I eat a lot of pinto beans. Great northern/white beans are good as well. Here are some recipe ideas:
Pinto Beans:
- Chili
- Refried Beans
- Cajun Style Baked Beans
- Gumbo with pinto beans
- Tortilla soup with chicken and pinto beans
- Peas and rice (kidney beans are used, typically)
White Beans:
- Vegetable soup with white beans
- Spinach/Collards with white beans
- White bean hummus
Chick peas:
- Mushroom loaf w/ gravy using chickpea flour, oats, nuts, etc.
Tofu:
- Goes in almost any Asian cuisine (Indian, Thai, Chinese, etc...) fry it for stir fry.
For cooking meatless, I recommend using mushrooms, yeast flakes and yeast extract for adding umami flavor.
Seitan, tempeh, lentils, and beans w/ rice are the highest protein to calorie ratio foods I eat. Sprouted seed bread, most nuts/seeds, and most vegetables are pretty high in protein as well. I supplement with pea protein isolate to reach very high protein intake levels for bodybuilding purposes.
I think you probably know this, but whey is suitable for vegetarians (being a byproduct of curdling milk) - and whey-based protein supplements are often vegetarian. Vegan protein supplements are generally extracted from things like peas, beans or hemp.
I do know that, but thanks for clarifying. The word vegetarian in this case refers to being composed of only plant products. Maybe it can't be used that way.
when people ask about protein on a non-meat diet, I always like to ask them if they know how much protein they're getting daily. Their answers are usually no, unless they are an athlete.
So...do you know how much protein you get on a daily basis?
Oh yeah. I can eat rajma like pad thai: until I'm foodcomatose. Indian food is phreak'n awesome.
Also, I eat habaneros and jalapeños, and have a hot sauce collection. A family friend tried to slip me a Carolina Reaper as a "garnish" once, but I didn't fall for it, lol.
I really don't want to live too long because I'm predestined to get ARMD, prostate cancer, and probably colon cancer too. I'd rather carpe diem and die well.
Fair warning: I'm an almost always ovo-lacto-pesci-vegetarian for ecological and human species existential threats reasons for about 12 years. I'd like to remove ovo- and lacto-, but it's so dang difficult. Also, an adrenaline junkie.
I don't understand when you say that an explosion of flavors makes up for a lack of meat, because meat is pretty much flavorless unless you add a bunch of condiments.
If someone's world view of vegetables is broccoli, cabbage or carrots chopped and boiled and served as plate dressing, then in all honesty vegetables are flavorless. The thoughts of eating a mountain of over boiled cabbage just make my skin crawl.
Thankfully there are plenty of options out there that show that vegetables aren't just that, and the internet makes that all the more accessible now too!
That rather depends where you're sourcing your chicken or turkey. The birds my local butcher can supply may not be as cheap as those at the supermarket, but they have a whole lot more flavour.
The flavors that are missing are the umami flavors. I notice this in some vegetarian cooking. I utilize mushrooms, yeast flakes and yeast extract to add the missing umami. Tomatoes and other vegetables when appropriate. I don't adhere strictly to cultural norms, I just want my food to taste delicious when I eat it.
>Katsuobushi is made of katsuo or bonito, skipjack tuna, a saltwater fish. Bonito is rich in protein. If unprocessed, it has a 25% protein content, and if used to make katsuobushi, its protein content increases to 77%. It is also rich in inosinate, an important umami substance; the umami is multiplied many times over when combined with glutamate.
This is the mechanism behind ichiban dashi (“first soup stock”) in Japanese cuisine.
A lot of people point out “correlation is not causation” for studies like this; but to really internalize that point, I like to try to come up with reverse-causation hypotheses for the same data.
For example: what if people with any kind of chronic inflammation in their bodies (i.e. high disease load), are less able to tolerate spicy food?
I’m not saying this is a true or even likely hypothesis; just that it’s no less worthy of being considered as a hypothesis than “capsaicin promotes longevity” is; and so thinking about it can get you out of the frame of mind where reading a headline like the above one, makes you automatically internalize the headline as if “capsaicin promotes longevity” was what it said.
Anecdotally, nightshade[1] sensitivity seems to be common among people with autoimmune disease and nightshades are one of the anti-recommended foods on the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol, so I think this hypothesis carries some weight.
My personal experience is with Celiac disease and Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and nightshades absolutely destroy me.
[1]Which includes chili peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes.
Red tomatoes and certain strains moreso, are very highly acidic. This happens to any and all humans who eat enough tomato. I breed and grow more than 35 heirloom strains of tomatoes, and some days consume many pounds of tomatoes. Through mid season I often get quite a few chancre sores and what you're describing, but I just don't care to stop eating them.
Also to the person above who said that Nightshades bother Celiacs; My grandmother is the only Celiac that I know of and whom has nearly died and been longterm hospitalized back before they could figure out what it was, has never had any issues whatsoever from the Nightshades. They end up being favorite foods of hers. She only has flare up issues with wheat gluten.
As much as your statement on acidity is true, there is also another explanation why this person's mouth is tingling while eating tomatoes, and that could be a histamine intolarence since tomatoes are high in histamine.
While inflammations and even frank ulceration are painful, you can live your life with IBD while still enjoying very spicy food, for the same reason that you can enjoy spicy food when you're used to it.
There's a good reason to think that spicy food improves outcomes causally from a neurological point of view as well as, possibly, a gut microbiome point of view. I would say that the alternative you describe is mechanistically possible but not as plausible.
Your reply isn't on the same meta-level as the comment it was replying to. :) My comment wasn't really attempting to assert the hypothesis it mentions. In fact, please ignore the textual content of my hypothesis–it's entirely irrelevant. I was just trying to take this opportunity to talk about a technique for good epistemological hygiene.
What I was trying to do, was:
1. to propose a question that needs an experiment to answer (a hypothesis); and to use that question to make clear that the implicit thought people jump to thinking when reading a headline like this is also "a question that needs an experiment to answer" (a hypothesis.)
2. to propose that when you encounter a headline like this, you should do the same — generate alternative hypotheses, in order to remind yourself that the first interpretation you jumped to of the study's correlation was also just a question.
The point of differentiating the two, is that hypotheses, by themselves, do not convey information about the world. You should not update your mental model of the world based solely on the fact that you generated a plausible-sounding hypothesis. A hypothesis is a question, not an answer.
Certain facts about the world are contingent on a given hypothesis proving out. By privileging a hypothesis — thinking about it and no other — you may implicitly raise your expectations of those contingent facts being true. And that can lead you astray. Those facts haven't earned a place in your mental model of the world. They're not paying rent. They're freeloaders. And it's potentially dangerously false to allow yourself to believe them.
The point of generating other hypotheses isn't to find one that could be more true. It's to scrub those contingent-facts of your intuitively-privileged hypothesis from your mind, by throwing other contingent worlds at it — hopefully many such contingent worlds — until your brain just gives up and avoids absorbing any of those contingent facts, treating them all as they should be treated: as mental noise, unworthy of more than a moment's consideration.
Or, to put that another way:
When there's evidence in favor of two things being somehow connected, but nothing has been proven about the way in which they're connected, the only rational thing to believe about that connection... is nothing. :)
No, you're right, but I suppose in the grand scheme of things, I was alluding to the fact that in this case (and in many other cases) we do have incomplete and imperfect prior knowledge, but prior knowledge nonetheless, which would allow us to make causal inference. With some uncertainty of course.
I would argue that making these causal inferences without formal proof is actually somewhat essential and desirable, so long as assumptions and uncertainty are recognized, and that they lead to further probing (informed by such inference).
Many people seem to think science is about "finding the truth" (ie.: obtaining "first-order" information about the world), and that's certainly one way to see it... But I think it's more interesting to think of science as being all about finding, quantifying and describing uncertainty.
This might seem pedantic, but you don't need to abandon all uncertainty in order to make causal inference. I think we're saying mostly the same things, in different ways and with different implicit assumptions about what it means to do science. It's obvious from your answer that you also understand all of this very well.
PS.: I have an MSc in biochem: not claiming to be a great scientist, but I do have formal training so I'm at least familiar with the matter :)
Oh, certainly, you can make causal inference under uncertainty. But then, rather than privileging a single hypothesis just because it's the first one you intuitively generated, you should probably instead:
1. generate a good few hypotheses;
2. rank them by their seeming plausibility;
3. discard the ones below some cut-off of "being worth the mental effort";
4. and then try to construct isolated contingent mental models of each of the worlds following from each of the hypotheses being true, making sure to store them in your mind as contingent models, rather than as "facts-in-the-world."
You can reason with inferences over contingent facts, but—especially in situations where several of the hypotheses you generate are equally plausible—it's very useful to sort of mentally "tag" those contingent-facts as contingent, so that you'll realize when you're using them in your reasoning; back up; and "drive down all the roads" (i.e. work out what the answer would be under all the contingent models you're holding onto) instead of just one.
However, if after some actual effort there's only one plausible hypothesis you can think of, then sure, just update on it directly. If there's only one contingent world, keeping it tagged as "contingent" in your mental model isn't doing any useful work for you. You can just learn it, and then unlearn it later if it's not true. (And, of course, that comes up all the time in regular life. Some things really are just "predictable.")
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In domains that are about resolving uncertainty — like scientific research — I would say it's pretty unlikely that you'll ever run into an interesting hypothesis (i.e. the kind you get a grant to study) that is so plausible that its alternatives — or even its null hypothesis! — can be entirely mentally discarded in advance of doing the experiment.
But, on the other hand, this doesn't matter so much; science is nice because it actually is quite tolerant of its participants' mental models being all over the place! "Scientific rigor" is externalized to the scientific process (enforced by peer review) — sort of like rigor in programming can be externalized to the language, and enforced by the compiler. There doesn't need to be much of anything happening within the minds of the researchers. (Thus incrementalism, scientific positivism, etc.)
But this isn't true once you leave the realm of process rigor, and enter the realm of regular people deciding what they should do when they read about scientific studies: how they should—or shouldn't!—seek to apply the "potential facts" they hear about from these studies in their everyday lives.
This is especially relevant in areas where non-scientists are closely following — and attempting to operationalize — the cutting-edge of scientific research, where there is not enough aggregate evidence to prove much. In such domains, it's the consumer of the science that needs good epistemic hygiene, not the scientists themselves. (Good examples of such areas: nootropics; sports nutrition; macroeconomics; and, amusingly, software engineering.)
> As soon as scientific evidence is shown that counters their stake or world view, then we go straight to "correlation is not causation."
I like to think people are more fair than that.
In this case in particular I tend to eat as much spicy food as I can. I have about 20 bottles of hot sauce within arms reach as I type this, I add some set of peppers onions and garlic to basically any meal I cook, and I usually order thai hot when it's offered even though it definitely kicks my ass.
And yet when I read this headline I immediately jumped to correlation.
I think if 2020 should have taught us anything, it's that people have a very loose relationship with proper science. I think you may be over-estimating people's abilities and attitudes... Consider yourself lucky to have such a great entourage! ;)
Capsaicin is a chemical irritant to any and all skin it touches in mammals. Furthermore, Capsaicin is anti-fungal so I can't see how it's possibly all that great for the gut microbiome. I can't see any cause for why it would be healthy for a human neurologically either. So, I'd say what you're saying is not all that plausible.
The principle behind modifying the gut microbiome to achieve good outcomes requires the intestinal flora to change: that means, for example, that some bacteria must die and some bacteria must proliferate. This is one of the main reasons why curcumin (from turmeric), for example, is the subject of much research in the field.
Anti-microbial properties don't apply equally to all species of microbes, and such selective action is essential for modulating the microbiome.
Disturbances of the gut flora do tend to lead to poorer outcomes more often than not, but this is not a hard rule. It's rather that complex machines are fragile, and most modifications done in flight lead to adverse outcomes: without prior knowledge and generally speaking, it's a bit like adding or removing a random line of code in a large application.
> Furthermore, Capsaicin is anti-fungal so I can't see how it's possibly all that great for the gut microbiome
Fungi tend to compete with bacteria; if modern lifestyles generally tend to result in a overly fungus-heavy gut biome, a food with anti-fungal properties could restore healthy balance.
Do you have any examples of unhealthy South Indian menus.
Wheat is not native to India and rice is considered a superior complex carb. Wheat has also been hybridized so many times while multiple varieties of ancient rice still exists in South India.
One of the words for ‘outsider’ in Sanskrit is Mleccha. It also means..’wheat eater’.
Rice growing countries like China, India, Japan and many Asian countries have a far healthier diet than countries with a wheat heavy(non vegetarian and hence grain heavy) cuisine.
Either it's portion sizes, diet, or genetics. Or something else. But so many population risk factors are higher for South Asians at comparable stages of their life (same age, BMI - adjusted down, etc) that it would be a mistake to assume based on first principles.
Roti, paratha, bhatia come to mind. It is sometimes easy to think in South India urud daal is only used for idli / dosa but the south definitely consumes its fair share of other bread varieties
South Asians are at a higher risk genetically. I don't think diet can be blamed because CVD rates are much higher even when you control for BMI and age, and are higher among those living in America (which skews them towards western dietary habits) compared to other ethnic groups in America.
What does make roti healthy? Do you mean the kind which is made from wholewheat unleavened flour? Even that doesn't qualify as "healthy" for me, although it's better (and tastier!) than most others kinds of bread.
As an Indian, especially from southern India, this is great news for me. Mainly because this has been the wisdom of my grandparents repeated again and again. Not that Chili reduces death rate, but that chili is very very good for health.
In southern India cuisine, green chilis, red chilis, dried red chilis and dried red chili powder is a staple of daily food.
We have pickles that are exclusively made from red chilis, one of the most famous ones.
Although it’s now quite common in the cuisine, did you know that chili peppers are not native to India and were brought into the country by Portuguese traders just over 500 years ago? [1] Black pepper, on the other hand, is native to the country and has been used in cooking for at least 4000 years now. [2]
It was bought by Portuguese traders..likely vasco da gama.
Indian cuisine had other ‘spices for heat like mustard seeds, long pepper, ginger etc. it’s a more complex multi layered heat than chili peppers.
Also Szchewan* peppers are actually from the citrus family and not true peppers. Their numbing feeling enhances the ‘spice factor’. It’s a neurological hack. This can be used to make dishes seem spicier than they really are.. and this is native to China.
Chili peppers originate from South America of course, and only made their way to the rest of the world via the Colombian Exchange. Food in the old world changed drastically and would be unrecognizable to us today (eg Hunan food without chili peppers).
Or Italian food without tomato sauce, Ireland and Poland without potatoes, or Switzerland without chocolate. It really was one of the most consequential moments in human history.
Yep. It was bonkers when I learned that potatoes, a staple food in Europe and across the entire world, basically didn't exist outside Peru until the mid 1500s.
Nitpick: Hunan cuisine makes significant use of Sichuan peppers for some flavors, not just chili peppers. Sichuan peppers are unrelated to chili peppers, and are harvested from plants which are native to eastern Asia -- it was probably used in Chinese cuisine long before chili peppers were first imported.
As far as I'm aware, the cultivation of capsicum peppers is generally believed to have began in Mexico, however these peppers grew in the wild in Central and South America as well, and were cultivated there as well. There are five domesticated species of capsicum pepper. Of those, C. baccatum is from the South American Andes, as is C. pubescens. The origins of C. chinese are a bit unclear, but this species is known to be very diverse in the Amazon. C. frutescens I'm not sure about, but C. Annuums came from southern North America or northern South America. There are also another 20 or so wild species, which are found throughout this region.
Basically, these sort of peppers were native throughout southern North America, Central America, and much of South America. Furthermore consumption of these peppers likely predated their cultivation by thousands of years.
They did a meta analysis (summarizing many, many studies) focusing on chili peppers and mortality, and reported the results. What’s interesting in the graphic in the link provided is that the correlation is present in basically every study shown. It’s very strong evidence for a correlation. On the other hand it’s very hard to explain causality without bringing out general terms like “antioxidants” or, possibly much more likely, confounding variables. It would be helpful to look at confounding variables, but those aren’t available yetis the study is not public. Simply put, it’s an interesting presentation but you can’t draw much useful inference without actually seeing the content of the presentation. That and their study has not meant the rigors of a peer-reviewed article yet.
I do not believe any of this for a second. I don't believe these studies can show or prove that correlation is the causation. I don't believe that capsaicin is lowering cancer and heart disease deaths by a magical and clean, 25%. It sounds nice, though.
To the people saying that correlation does not imply causation: we're Bayesian machines, not publishing journals. Feel free to weight this by whatever odds you give to causation being the other way, and act on it. For example if you think it's 2:1 as likely to be something else, like a confounding variable, it still a 10% decrease in all-time mortality to start eating chili. I'm very much averse to spiciness, but guess who's going to be considering it from now on?
Of course. And a real-life bayesian agent should also have a shortcut for "odds too low to bother updating". I just wanted to point out that journal standards shouldn't be applied for real life decisions. What priors you have is totally up to you.
Initially I assumed this would increase average lifespan by 25% or so. But it doesn't. Like if you assume zero percent chance of dying before age 80 and 10% every year after, then your average lifespan is around 85 years. If you eat chilis then it doesn't affect your first 80 years at all and only gives you an extra year or two after 80, so maybe 87 on average. Obviously this is a simplification but shows that eating chilis won't automatically make you live to 125. (Assuming the headline holds, which...)
Chili peppers releases endorphins and dopamine. Gives the sensation of feeling ‘high’.
[...] One such message produced by capsaicinoids is substance P, which transmits pain signals. The brain responds by releasing another type of neurotransmitter known as endorphins. Endorphins are the body’s natural way of relieving pain by blocking the nerve’s ability to transmit pain signals. Additionally, the neurotransmitter dopamine, responsible for a sense of reward and pleasure, is also released. In essence, for some people eating large amounts of spicy food triggers a sense of euphoria similar to a “runner’s high”.[..]
If the same benefits are also associated with hot sauces, then I'm gonna live forever. I eat hot sauce with just about anything. (I love Cholula and Tapatio...)
A heuristic: if somebody had demonstrated causation for a 25% reduction in all cause mortality, you wouldn’t be learning about it on HN first, because it would be the headline of every newspaper on the planet. 25% mortality reduction would be the biggest news in human health since germ theory.
Another interesting comment was that those who eat chili pepper have a wider spice tolerance and maybe end up eating a greater diversity of healthy foods (rather than traditional western diet staples).
An important notion is that this is an in vitro study, people who appear to 'like' chili peppers are associated with
"a 26% relative reduction in cardiovascular mortality;
a 23% relative reduction in cancer mortality; and
a 25% relative reduction in all-cause mortality."
which is absolutely massive. so either chili peppers are the new superfood which trumps all others or the more likely boring explanation is that chili pepper eaters had the best health outcome of all N foods studied. Suffice to say that chili pepper fans are different to the populace in more ways than one. these kinds of broad studies seem to be a waste of time in my honest opinion. Studies seem to be attempting to crown one particular ingredient or lifestyle and apply that over the whole population thereby destroying the effects of certain diets on the individual. I'm positive that more imformation could be gained by trialling small dietary changes with a control group and measuring the mentioned health markers.
It goes without saying that its easy for me to criticise but I still appreciate all the studies
They may or may not be a waste of time, but they are not science. Without the hypothesis of a mechanism, and experiments specifically designed to disprove that hypothesis, it’s not science. Post-hoc observations of correlations are more closely aligned with astrology or financial journalism than anything we should consider science.
> “The exact reasons and mechanisms that might explain our findings, though, are currently unknown. Therefore, it is impossible to conclusively say that eating more chili pepper can prolong life and reduce deaths, especially from cardiovascular factors or cancer. More research, especially evidence from randomized controlled studies, is needed to confirm these preliminary findings.”
Could the reason be capsaicin [1], which has some medical uses (though the Wikipedia article says there’s no clear evidence from an older citation)?
Also just sounds silly. I haven't read through the papers, but I highly doubt anyone studied how chili consumption affected the change of dying in car accidents.
You probably consume less food in general or less fattening when it's spiced with peppers (i.e. less likely to eat spicy butter cream that plain butter in a dish and more likely to eat spicy soups that butter laden croissants). They haven't actually isolated anything about peppers, so likely something in the underlying population who self-selects this way.
Or maybe capsaicin helps to sate hunger. Or it makes you antsy and compels you into action. Or it makes you irritable in general and more likely to get into vigorous arguments and fights — all of which ingest less or burn more calories.
Man I wish it were, as of late I've become addicted to putting a couple drops of Blair's Mega Death on all my main dishes.
I've found it to be the best spicy I've ever eaten: it does not leave the mouth (no throat or lip burn, does not go up your nose), the crescendo is soft (if you dilute it), and takes no more than 20min to go away after your last bite.
I buy 1/2 on bags of ground habanero pepper for like $5 a bag and put it on all my lunches and dinner. If you can see the powder on your food, it will be blazing hot.
I end up drinking about a liter of ice water and have to pause my eating several times. I often end up shivering after due to the sweating and the ice water.
It sounds quite spicy though, no? The thing I like about sriracha is I can use a lot of it. That sauce sounds like I'd only be able to use a couple of drops before the heat was too much to handle.
Funny thing that, I used to suffer from heartburn quite a bit, and instead of pepcid ac, or the like, I started eating sriracha on everything ( as I noticed I seemed to never have heartburn after using it in a meal ), no more heartburn... weird right?
I dont believe this result (would be interesting to read the full paper). Probably in countries with high chilly intake other causes of death are just higher (looking at you traffic accidents)
Good Indian food, for example, is very easy to enjoy vegetarian, as the explosion of flavors makes up for the lack of meat.
Disclosure: I’m a part-time vegetarian.