Love spicy food? Thank the bugs

Not only diversity for the spicy, variety is the spice of life.
Massively standardize, cloned, and become an easy digest.
Vive la difference. Death is sameness.

I've long contended that the use of highly spiced (read "hot") foods in countries near the equator was to hide the taste of spoiling food. People just blame their diarrhea on the spiciness rather than on the spoiled food itself. That the spiciness would prevent the food from making one sick seems a less likely rationale.

Although hiding spoiling food is possible, but it is not spiciness that made them less sick. It was due to spiciness that they were less likely to have fungus in turn making them easier to digest without becoming sick.

If capsaicin kills fungus, how it affects the bacteria in our stomachs?

Definitely. My wife grew up in Bangkok, and it is almost impossible to get her to refrigerate food. Counterintuitively, she rarely did so when living in Bangkok because everything was smothered in chilies and never spoiled, even in stifling heat and humidity. Food spoils a lot faster in countries that don't use a lot of spices, even if the temperature is far more moderate.

brilliant! more thinking like this please. we lost so much profound knowledge as we gained the trappings of civilization. maybe with ingenuity and technology we can have both.

ppl eat spicy because spicy foods make you sweat and cool down, especially when it's humid and hard to sweat.

Spice the food and overeat. Other chemicals to lower the appetite ?
Oil, grease in the food, makes you feel full, fast.
Spice the grease, to get it just right ?
Food is the best medicine, but watch for the poison mushroom.

I agree with Rory. Most of the families in India won't refrigerate food even today. Because Indian recipes has lots of spices. Turmeric and peppers keep the food safe.

Bad reporting – title says "thank bugs" and then the article discusses mostly fungus. Seems someone skimmed a research paper, but missed some of the facts in this summary.

Humans can consume and digest, without deleterious effect, food that is putrescent. In fact, it was common practice to age (decay) wild poultry and game to make it more tender. Spices offset or mask unpleasant flavors associated with decay. The spice trade was driven largely by black pepper for the reason that it made meat that had gone off palatable. Additionally, one must consider that among early civilizations, if it wasn't poisonous, you ate it because it was food.

It's not that the birds' physiology is "not designed to sense the burn", it is that chiles evolved the ability to produce a chemical (capsaicin) that specifically targets mammals but not birds. It is beneficial to the chiles to be eaten by birds for seed dispersal. This would have been a nice opportunity for the CNN science editors to educate the public about how evolution works, using animals and plants we are all familiar with. Instead, they dropped the ball. Birds and chiles and mammals were not designed, they evolved.

Anyway, cool science! Nice job by Tewksbury et al.

I didn't know plants could "want" or "prefer". Is this some kind of new "Science" or just a joke. This guy isn't serious, is he?? Does this guy get paid "taxpayer money" to make stuff up?

"The chili doesn’t want the fungus to consume the seeds; it much prefers that birds cozy up to the seed smorgasboard. "

Payton – get a sense of humor!

Of course it's a joke! I, for one, found it amusing and tongue-in-cheek. Good article!

Credit the bugs for fruit tree variety. Bugs damage, creating fugai opportunity.
A way to hide, is to confuse the bugs, by limited genetic production lines.

Extrapolating this concept to humans, Vive la Différence!

Really, Payton... maybe you should stick to articles that aren't over your head.

Read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and you will learn how a plant can "want" something to happen.

CY

What does a Venus Fly Trap think, when you spice the fly with pepper.
Yum yum, thank you, that killed the hunger, or thoughtless ahhchu ?

[...] are chilli hot? Its the bugs! Love spicy food? Thank the bugs Posted: 10:03 AM ET Ever wonder why chili peppers are hot, and why some are hotter than others? [...]

If you fattened the Venus Fly Trap, all kinds of spices.
Discovered, the next, ultimate pizza topping, to die for ?

Yes, reading over this again and keeping all the comments in mind, this was surely bad reporting whipped up within an hour of getting the press release.

Brilliant! Like the grey squirrel who eats only the pleasing tasting, lipid enriched for long winter survival, top of the acorn-the bottom is bitter enabling the seed portion to germinate and became another tree- so the chili pepper has evolved its own method of proliferation. Nature is full of amazing secrets and life finds a way to continue in ways we have yet to discover.

Human spices, to attract the opposite sex. Sweat, deodorant perfume.
Eat lots of Garic, don't bathe, and a girl named Spicy will find Mr. Right.

Franko, you are babbling nonsense. Even the coherent parts are unnecessary and take away from the conversation.

Sto !
Lighthearted tone began with the title. "Love spicy food? Thank the bugs"

Who appointed you Blog Police ?
Lead and show good example, think clever. Try hard, even you can do it.