Live data from Hacker News

Do Colder or Warmer Places Eat More Spicy or Bland Food?

atlasobscura.com

1–10 of 40 posts

Re: Do Colder or Warmer Places Eat More Spicy or Bland Food?

#4
What a bizarre classification: unusually specific in some instances, and enormously vague in others - Mughlai vs. South Indian. South Indian food contains a lot of variety - from coastal Andhra, to Chettinad style, to Kerala food, Mysore, Udupi cuisine, and Hyderabad-style, all have varied levels of spices, some South Indian cuisine is spicier than Rajasthani cuisine, for sure.

But on a more pertinent note - it may be something historical - you need to spice up the food a little to disguise slightly stale food. Historically, a lot of the present spices like black pepper, cardamom and cinnamon also came from places like Kerala, Sri Lanka and Malaysia which were very close to the equator. No wonder it affected the food there.

Re: Do Colder or Warmer Places Eat More Spicy or Bland Food?

#5
I wonder how they chose which countries to include in the graph. A lot of my family's Venezuelan and have 0 spice tolerance whatsoever despite growing up near the equator.

They also seem to be ranking things per recipe rather than per unit of food eaten by the population, if you read the abstract. Even if there are 9 spicy recipes and 1 bland recipe in a country, if the 1 bland recipe is eaten every day, doesn't that just show that there are more spicy varieties of dishes?

Still an interesting article regardless.

Re: Do Colder or Warmer Places Eat More Spicy or Bland Food?

#9
post #8

The article seems to ignore the fact that people eat what grows locally. So, India grows a lot of spices, hence the food has those as ingredients. Norway doesn’t, so food is bland. That’s my theory anyway..

Your theory ignores the fact that chili peppers are a new world vegetable.

Re: Do Colder or Warmer Places Eat More Spicy or Bland Food?

#10
post #4

What a bizarre classification: unusually specific in some instances, and enormously vague in others - Mughlai vs. South Indian. South Indian food contains a lot of variety - from coastal Andhra, to Chettinad style, to Kerala food, Mysore, Udupi cuisine, and Hyderabad-style, all have varied levels of spices, some South Indian cuisine is spicier than Rajasthani cuisine, for sure. But on a more pertinent note - it may b…

Another theory could be that a lot of Indians are vegetarian and spices make vegetarian foods more palatable. You could eat most meats with only a dash of salt; however vegetarian dishes need to pair spices with the vegetables to make them appealing.
Post reply on HN