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Why is American food getting spicier?
Here is one hypothesis:
...some food scientists and market researchers think there is a more surprising reason for the broad nationwide shift toward bolder flavors: The baby boomers, that huge, youth-chasing, all-important demographic, are getting old. As they age, they are losing their ability to taste - and turning to spicier, higher-flavor foods to overcome their dulled senses. Chiefly because of degenerating olfactory nerves, most aging people experience a diminished sense of taste, whether they realize it or not. But unlike previous generations, the nation's 80 million boomers have broad appetites, a full set of teeth, and the spending power to shape the entire food market.
I'd be surprised if that explained more than five percent of what is going on. Younger people are also preferring spicier food. Western Europe has an older population, but I don't see them (UK aside) falling for spicy food at a comparable rate as are Americans. Nor does Naples, Florida have much spicy food outside of its Haitian community. Instead America has more immigrants, and more restaurants run by immigrants. Spicy foods are addictive. Most importantly, spicy ethnic food is often better than what we had before, which indeed was usually horrible. Sometimes the best explanation is the simplest one.
I might add that what is eaten is hardly very spicy at all, at least not to my palate.
Thanks to Michael Makowsky, a loyal MR reader, for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 8, 2007 at 01:16 PM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
It's a shift from the bland English tradition that was the basis of the origins of the US, to a more international variety. Most Asian and South American cuisines use more hot spices than in northern Europe.
As more people from these regions move to the US they bring their cultures with them. Others find them acceptable as well. There are no complicated explanations needed.
Posted by: robertdfeinman at Oct 8, 2007 1:26:40 PM
I work with a Korean guy. He's very funny ("this isn't very spicy").
Posted by: odograph at Oct 8, 2007 1:30:15 PM
Don't forget Nexium Pepcid etc
Posted by: DanC at Oct 8, 2007 1:44:19 PM
Factor in general increases in wealth coupled with decreases in transport costs leading to spice costs becoming dramatically cheaper and spice variety becoming correspondingly larger (doesn't explain Europe, though). In my youth, spices were expensive enough to be worth noticing, while nowadays they are quite cheap (if you avoid the McCormick racket).
Also factor in the growth of chicken as the standard meat of choice for American diets, and the decline of beef and pork in that role. Beef can be eaten easily spices or sauces, and it's optimal spicing is pretty much just some black pepper, salt and maybe some granulated garlic. Chicken without spices is almost inedibly bland, but chicken offers much more possibility for spicing and saucing. Pork is inbetween, but as pork has become much leaner over the years it has also come to both need and afford spicing and saucing more. If turkey or tofu ever become large components of the American diet, expect spices to become even hotter.
All that said, increased immigration is certainly a factor. Acceptable Thai restaurants have filtered down to towns of about 80K population, while in my youth they were confined to major metropolises, and acceptable Ethiopian restaurants start at around 200K population. (This is not an invitation for Steve Sailer to start dissing the larb and doro wat.)
Posted by: Dave at Oct 8, 2007 2:36:42 PM
South American food, spicy?
Posted by: neil at Oct 8, 2007 3:14:08 PM
Dave,
Beef can be spiced in many ways -- it's just the steak cult that makes it often serve unspiced in the US.
Think various BBQed beef, beef+horseradish (the hottest traditional English 'spice',) many Asian chilie+beef dishes, ranging from pure sambal+beef or dried peppers+beef, to the citrus+chilie+beef salads, and on to the curries of various types. I've had many more highly spiced beef dishes than chicken dishes.
Posted by: gorobei at Oct 8, 2007 3:14:46 PM
Paul Rozin (Psychology, UPenn) has been studying eating behaviors and specifically spicy food for years. There are a small handful of things we consume that are initially highly unpleasant, but that we work to develop a taste for. Some, like beer or coffee, are likely tolerated for pleasant side effects that outweigh the initial unpleasant taste.
But spicy foods are funny because they don't have a drug component like alcohol or caffeine. Once people start eating them, they really tend to like them a lot, though, even if the initial experience is negative.
Last I saw him speak, he didn't have a specific answer to the question. But iirc, the idea behind the best guess was that the "pain" spicy foods evoke triggers an internal analgesic response (e.g., endorphins) that is rewarding. And since it isn't a real pain sensation, it may be a cheap way of fooling your body into a positive response (like a thrill ride response to fake the positive elements of a response to danger).
This isn't necessarily different than your tossed off, "spicy foods are addictive." It's just some theory as to why that might be somewhat true.
Posted by: Paul J. Reber at Oct 8, 2007 3:15:53 PM
...I'd bet money that increased perfume sales, especially of 'classic' scents like chanel #5, have increased with the aging of the boomers, and that IS directly related to the original hypothesis
Posted by: shawn at Oct 8, 2007 3:16:23 PM
...robertfeinman....didn't you say the same thing Tyler did?
Posted by: shawn at Oct 8, 2007 3:18:18 PM
Spicy food is no different, in any way, from investment instruments. The diffusion of food types and spices available for mass consumption follows a Rogers-style diffusion pattern with communities playing an important role. The growth of wide access to cooking and food media (Food Network, celebrity chefs, reality nonsense...) helps to build knowledge of spices and foods that make them more readily acceptable to the public.
In a similar way, the rise of CNBC, celebrity investment gurus, and similar media made a much wider variety of investment choices more acceptable to the public beginning in the late 1970s. (If I had more time in my life I'd love to dig into these types of media-based information cascades. It would also give me a cheap excuse to eat lots of Indian food while doing 'research.')
Posted by: The other Eric at Oct 8, 2007 3:20:25 PM
I might add that what is eaten is hardly very spicy at all, at least not to my palate.
next time i'm in DC we def. should get lunch ;-)
Posted by: razib at Oct 8, 2007 3:22:12 PM
Spices from the tropics were always a luxury item to medieval Europeans, and now their descendants can afford more of them.
Spicy plants are more common at lower latitudes because spices are commonly anti-parasite poisons evolved to protect the plant from the teeming variety of parasites found more in year-round warm climates than wintry climates. (Also, more biodiversity is greater in the tropics due to more specialization because of fewer seasonal swings). Thus, 15th Century Europe's equivalent of the space race of the 20th Century was to find shipping routes to the Spice Islands of the East Indies to bring back peppers so that meat could be preserved longer against parasites.
Thus, cuisines get blander the farther north you go (as Garrison Keillor's jokes about Norwegian cooking show), in part because there are so few spicy plants growing at latitudes where winter kills off most parasites.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Oct 8, 2007 3:29:48 PM
Spices from the tropics were always a luxury item to medieval Europeans, and now their descendants can afford more of them.
Spicy plants are more common at lower latitudes because spices are commonly anti-parasite poisons evolved to protect the plant from the teeming variety of parasites found more in year-round warm climates than wintry climates. (Also, more biodiversity is greater in the tropics due to more specialization because of fewer seasonal swings). Thus, 15th Century Europe's equivalent of the space race of the 20th Century was to find shipping routes to the Spice Islands of the East Indies to bring back peppers so that meat could be preserved longer against parasites.
Thus, cuisines get blander the farther north you go (as Garrison Keillor's jokes about Norwegian cooking show), in part because there are so few spicy plants growing at latitudes where winter kills off most parasites.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Oct 8, 2007 3:32:32 PM
I might add that what is eaten is hardly very spicy at all, at least not to my palate.
People with deficient taste buds always seem to indulge in spice macho.
Posted by: RJ at Oct 8, 2007 3:44:42 PM
As for food not being all that spicy to your palate, could habituation be at work? You have eaten spicy food in places where the population is habituated, and so demand more spice for the same kick that people who are not habituated get at lower doses. What I consider blandish my wife finds untolerably spicy.
You are now habituated and so find many US restaurants' servings too bland. If you went to Norway for a while, I wonder if on your return you would still say that the spicy food in the US was not all that spicy.
Posted by: Acad Ronin at Oct 8, 2007 3:56:33 PM
From a UK perspective I would speculate that there are two important factors, a weakening of traditional food culture and home cooking, and an increase in immigration. In other European countries(I'm thinking of Italy in particular here, although the same could probably go for elsewhere)people identify more strongly with their traditional food and demand for foreign food is fairly low outside of large cities.
Posted by: Phil at Oct 8, 2007 4:05:08 PM
Once Leno told a joke: Americans are eating x% more Mexican food now, why? Because we have x% more Mexicans now.
As others pointed out, it seems that the new waves of immigrants (Chinese, Southeastern Asian, Indian, Mexican) like spicier food than the bland food in the Anglo-German tradition. I doubt the Asians and Indians make much difference, but I wouldn't count out the Latinos.
Long live Jalapeño!
Posted by: howiewu at Oct 8, 2007 4:17:33 PM
I would say that Americans in general are more used to adopting everything from other cultures, and have therefore benefited from the cheaper spices over the last few decades. Throw in a more open boarder policy = more opportunity to be exposed to other food styles, a generally more independently mobile culture (i.e. more cars and cheaper gas), and more disposable income than most other cultures, and you can see that Americans are more prone to trying spicy foods that other cultures. More people who try = more people who like = more spicy foods consumed in America. Just my hunch, though, not really backed by any research.
Posted by: pawnking at Oct 8, 2007 4:48:57 PM
Is it an issue of habituation or damage? If I give up spicy food will my senses return to their original state within weeks or months?
Loud music does permanent damage, requiring ever louder music -- does spicy food permanently impair the ability to sense lower levels of the chemicals?
And is the addictiveness of spicy food similar to the addictive properties of tanning? The underlying mechanism - pain signals releasing natural endorphins which reinforce the behavior -- would seem to be the same.
Posted by: jim at Oct 8, 2007 5:22:39 PM
The main sensation supplied by spicy foods is heat, not flavor. Actually European cuisines, referred to as bland, are on the whole more flavorful, more varied in flavor, than hot cuisines.
Posted by: ricpic at Oct 8, 2007 5:39:58 PM
There are many Chinese dishes that consist of boiling food in a bowl with an insane amount of peppers. I can eat the dishes at the beginning, but once the water begins evaporating you're left with meat and veggies soaking in almost pure pepper essence. As a Russian there said to me, "what the hell is the point of burning your tongue?" I like some spicy foods, but I don't work to build up a resistance. It makes as much sense to me as doing whiskey shots at every meal to build up alcohol resistance, so I can say, "I might add that what is drunk is hardly very strong at all..."
Posted by: 8 at Oct 8, 2007 6:00:07 PM
Southamerican food spicy? Yes, im southamerican.
Smoking is one cause.
Posted by: jean at Oct 8, 2007 7:21:04 PM
In Indian cuisine, there's always some spice. But the idea of eating "spicy food" is usually reserved to special occasions like dinner for a guest or going out to a restaurant.
In the past 10 years, however, the food that Indians eat at home has become much more spicy. People like the addicting special occasion spicy food, and now want to eat like that all the time. Cheap, ready made masala mixes make it possible to eat spicy everyday.
Posted by: SKT at Oct 8, 2007 8:44:17 PM
A few years ago I was reading an explanation for increased seasoning in American cooking that makes sense to me. Meats, vegetables, dairy products that are bred for shelf life and produced using hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, low grade feeds, and genetic modifications are tastless compared with the farm products that we grew up with. An organic or kosher chicken, or an organic egg, or a home grown tomato can be delicious with a touch of salt and pepper. A chicken, egg, or tomato from a factory farm needs a lot of garlic or thyme or basil to be palatable.
Posted by: John Mark Rozendaal at Oct 8, 2007 9:28:24 PM
People with deficient taste buds always seem to indulge in spice macho.
People with deficient palates and bravery always seem to avoid strong spicy food.
Posted by: mike at Oct 8, 2007 10:15:30 PM
