The Taste of Conquest (42 page)

In the West, this abstemious approach has begun to change only in the last fifty years. Between 1961 and 1994, the volume of spices imported into the United States increased close to 400 percent and doubled again in the next decade. The average contemporary American eats more pepper than any medieval aristocrat, on top of all the other spices once traded on the Rialto and the Nieuwemarkt. But today,
Piper nigrum
is no longer the king. Dried capsicums have long since overtaken the berries from Malabar as America’s favorite spice.

The reasons that lie behind the transformation in the American taste for spice are much the same as in the Netherlands—or anywhere in the developed world, for that matter. Immigrants bring the taste for chili and ginger from Latin America and Asia while at the same time overseas travelers (professional chefs among them) return with an appetite for the more complex flavors they’ve tried. However, companies such as McCormick do not merely capitalize on these trends; they shape them and, when it suits their purposes, transform them. Thus, foreign flavors that might be too pungent are mellowed for the domestic market. (You can rest assured that McCormick’s “Balti curry spices” wouldn’t knock anybody’s socks off in Baltistan.) But you can’t really fault Baltimore for that. If the seasonings remained in their original, “authentic” concentration, they would never reach a broad-based audience. Nevertheless, just like the apocryphal dogs, the public is experiencing more and more spicy heat without really noticing it.

A global company such as McCormick also takes advantage of trends that appear in one market by introducing them in another. When single-use packaging (packets of a few grams of spice in much the same spirit as the little cones of pepper sold in old Amsterdam) became popular in the United Kingdom, similar packages followed in the United States and France.

Globalization has not only affected how people eat around the world; it has also changed what farmers grow and where they grow it. To some extent, this was true when Malabar pepper was transplanted from India into Indonesia in the early Middle Ages and ginger was brought to the Caribbean by the Portuguese. But now spices come from all sorts of unlikely spots. Guatemala is the world’s largest cardamom exporter, even though the locals barely know what to do with the stuff—virtually all of it is exported to the Middle East. Most of the world’s vanilla—an orchid of Mexican origin—comes from Madagascar and Indonesia, but there are other, relatively new sources. Today, McCormick obtains a lot of its vanilla from Uganda. Because of ever-increasing demand, even the Indian Spices Board is encouraging pepper farmers in Malabar to grow the long, skinny pods. The new kid on the block is Vietnam, which, in ancient times, used to import black pepper from Malabar and is now the world’s premier pepper producer, undercutting everyone else’s prices. (Indonesia and Brazil come next; India is a distant fourth.) These days, Indian farmers worry about cheap pepper exports from Indochina much as American textile workers bemoan imports from South Asia. But even in India, people realize that the spice trade is changing, and perhaps more than elsewhere, they are trying to prepare for a karmic rebirth.

W
EAPONS AND
N
UTRACEUTICALS

The first hint of how seriously spices are taken in India was driven home when I boarded a domestic flight to Calicut. Before I passed through security, the sign warned, “Passengers are requested not to carry pickles, chilly powder, masala powders”—as well as the usual forbidden arsenal of lighters, sharp objects, and nail clippers—in their hand luggage. (“Pickles,” in this case, refers to highly spiced condiments such as mango pickle.) In India, scientists have studied how spices can be used as weapons, food preservatives, colorants, drugs, and nutraceuticals. Naturally, there are also efforts to improve the strains of spices grown for better flavor and hardiness.

As a result of this ongoing research, the Indian government is especially wary of “biopiracy,” something I learned when I tried to get permission to visit the main research facility in the spice-producing state of Kerala. Luckily, I had been hardened by my McCormick experience. So, a half year’s correspondence later, I arrived at the Calicut airport clutching a handful of letters, duly stamped, dated, numbered, and signed by the undersecretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Research and Education. A large white taxi sent by the Indian Institute of Spices Research (IISR) awaited my arrival.

The institute is located on the outskirts of Calicut, just a little inland from where da Gama’s men first made their landing. To get there, you must brave the usual suicidal Indian car trip—dodging motorcycles, auto rickshaws, oblivious pedestrians, stray dogs, and speeding buses that seem to use the median divider primarily as a centering device. The research campus can be seen from a distance, rising like a castle on a hill. To enter, I have to pass muster with the guard, who seems disoriented to find a foreigner having been granted access to the holy of holies. Then the road winds up the hill, tightly sealed in by a barbed-wire-topped wall. At the highest point, I am deposited before the immaculate buildings surrounded by meticulously manicured grounds. There is no time for greetings or introductions before I am whisked into the sparkling new visitors center, presumably to avoid any temptation to do or see anything not strictly authorized.

The visitors center is a temple to spice. The local farmers who are allowed access come here to look at photos, receive instructional pamphlets, and get advice. The guardians of the temple, the barefoot scientists, now cluster around me to offer their hands, a cup of
chai,
a plate of biscuits, and a bowl of cashews. They are perplexed by my presence but also my interest. Just like the guard, they can’t quite understand how I found out the magic word to open the gate to their ivory tower. I am apparently the first non-Indian to have been afforded this honor.

The assembled cast represents the full range of the institute’s research program. There is the careful biochemist in her emerald sari—still nervous about my presence. The wild-eyed and brilliant botanist stalks the room like a caged panther. I am introduced to the dignified botanical economist, the eager field botanist, and the silent young chemist. One by one, they gradually relax as they realize that I have not come to ransack their biological treasure chest. And as they let down their guard, their passions slowly unravel: the biochemist insists on reeling off numbers to explain the advantages of organic agriculture; the brilliant botanist riffs on the overuse of the planet’s resources; the field botanist tries to convince me that our civilization would waste less if only we imitated the swamis who live on water and sunlight alone. Then, green coconuts are served as we cluster around the touch-screen computer module, where a slick interactive promo shows off the institute’s successes.

The work they do here is the kind done at any agricultural research facility. They study root rot, explore issues of yield, and try to improve the quality of the cultivars. The biochemist launches into a highly technical description of the compounds that give pepper its unique taste. (To a biochemist, the flavors that sparkle on the palate are reduced to fractions and formulas.) An oil called piperine gives pepper its heat, while other trace oils give aroma. Typically, if one is high, the other tends to be a little lower, meaning that the hottest pepper is often not the most flavorful. The IISR maintains a germplasm bank of pepper, turmeric, and cardamom as well as other spices, and field-workers continue to collect wild varieties to add to the collection. The botanist with the guru’s unruly gray hair tells me that they have more than 200 cultivars of pepper here, but then he shakes his quizzical head and offers me a half smile, “But the Brazilians claim to have almost 180.” So much for keeping the secret at home. But then, even the Dutch policy of systematic murder couldn’t maintain Holland’s spice monopoly.

It turns out that the scientists are as frustrated by the government’s paranoia as I was. Like researchers everywhere, they are eager to share their findings, but they are not allowed to present papers at overseas conferences. What seems to excite them the most these days is sustainable agriculture.

“In a natural undisturbed system, in the forest state,” the irrepressible field botanist breaks in, “pepper plants exist that are a hundred years old. But when you disturb the natural system, by tilling and adding manure, the life will deteriorate. Under cultivation, the plant will have a productive life of [merely] seven to fifteen years.”

“The disease problem is worse than it was a generation ago,” the brilliant botanist silences the others to explain. “Nobody has specifically studied the causes. It could be climate change, the introduction of exogenous agents, or some other factor. One thing is for sure: once the people start applying chemical fertilizers, the local microorganism population—that used to sustain all the plantations in olden days—will decline. So when you use organic fertilizers, there is a very good response, not only with black pepper but all the crops.”

Of course, organic is not popular just with the scientists; consumers in the developed world want it, too. Even McCormick has an organic line now. When I talk to the people in the middle, though—the farmers and the exporters—they’re resistant. Nonetheless, there are a few who see the future in growing spices organically, as they have for hundreds of years.

The past may hold a prescription for the future in other respects as well. Medical researchers in India and elsewhere have been trying to isolate the properties that make spices so potent in Ayurvedic medicine. Like the old Galenic system, the traditional Indian practice of Ayurveda is based on a scheme of bodily humors that are naturally affected by what you eat. To Ayurveda practitioners, spices are as much drugs as flavorings. The scientists at the IISR are happy to shift from discussions of spectrum analysis and genetic engineering to trading opinions on traditional healing practices. The brilliant botanist turns out to be a font of information on the local medical uses of spices.

“Nutmeg is a natural remedy, here, for sleeplessness.” He begins his monologue in an insistent staccato rhythm. “But you need just a small amount. We rub a little on babies’ lips to make them sleep, but just a little grain.” Myristicin, the active ingredient in nutmeg, has shown some potential as a weapon against cancer and liver disease, at least in animals. But there’s the thorny problem of its hallucinogenic effects. “The hippies, you know, in olden times, they would take one glass of liquor and dissolve the nutmeg in it.” The botanist tells the story and chortles. He adds, “Don’t try it. It is toxic!”

“Pepper, too, is used in Ayurveda medicine,” the spice guru continues. “There are enzymes in pepper that have antibiotic properties.” Mostly, though, scientists have focused on piperine’s effectiveness as a “potency multiplier.” Pepper is often added to Ayurvedic prescriptions to increase their effectiveness. It seems to do the same thing with more conventional medicines. In one study, researchers found that they could decrease the dose of a tuberculosis medicine by more than half with no loss in effectiveness; in another, chemotherapy for lung cancer seemed to work better when supplemented with piperine. An American has even patented Bioperine, a piperine extract, as a “bioavailability enhancer.”

“All the spices have medical qualities,” the others add their chorus of agreement. Ginger and cardamom are used to calm nausea. The capsaicin from chili peppers is widely used in arthritis creams. Galangal seems to kill cancerous cells while leaving the healthy ones alive, at least in the laboratory. In a study by the U.S. Agricultural Research Service, less than a half teaspoon a day of cinnamon reduced the blood sugar levels of sixty volunteers in Pakistan with type 2 diabetes who participated. Even their levels of LDL cholesterol (the bad one) dropped.

These days, though, the medical wunderkind of the spice world is turmeric. Curcumin, the active agent in turmeric, is a potent antioxidant and the subject of medical research at major universities around the world. The spice may protect against leukemia; it has been observed to inhibit the growth of cancerous cells in the lungs of mice with breast cancer; it seems to prevent the formation of diabetic cataracts; it pushes melanoma cells to self-destruct and may be useful in combating malaria, treating cystic fibrosis, fighting Alzheimer’s, and reducing chemotherapy-induced fatigue. “Nature’s gift to antioxidants,” the botanical economist chimes in, chuckling. And it makes a fine “natural” colorant, too.

And what of spices as weapons? Capsaicin is widely used in pepper sprays such as Mace (no connection to the Moluccan spice) both as a self-defense aid and, by the police, for crowd control. In the United States, a high-potency spray is marketed as a bear repellent, and in Africa, fences are smeared with a cocktail of grease and capsaicin to keep elephants at bay. Scientists at India’s Defense Research Laboratory have publicly identified the Tezpur as the subcontinent’s hottest chili, though just what they plan to do with it is, I’m sure, top secret. (It’s almost two hundred times as hot as a jalapeño.) Suffice it to say, it should probably be banned from hand luggage everywhere.

The scientists at the Indian Institute of Spices Research have more quotidian concerns. At the end of our delightfully informative interview, I wish them good luck in their battle against root rot and their search for the tastiest pepper, turmeric, and ginger. I pay the ten dollars that the Ministry of Agriculture requested for my admission to the spice temple and climb into the waiting taxi. I wave goodbye to the security guard at the front gate as the car swerves onto the main road to Calicut.