Daily Dose of English 37
Spicy Food
Daily Dose of English 37
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about spicy food, food that is hot, as we often say in the US, because that is not a common thing in the world to use the word hot to mean spicy, but also like when something is hot, like it's burning, because we often use them in the same way. A hot pepper is not necessarily a pepper that is on fire or burning, but actually a pepper that is spicy. Because spicy food isn't as big of a part of the United States, I guess, culture or food culture, unless it comes from a different country. because I'm not exactly sure why. I think the biggest reason is that European food isn't super spicy, except for in very specific parts of Europe, of the Europe, no, we call it Europe. And then also there aren't as many chilies and other kinds of spicy food that grow in that region as there are like in the South or Mexico, South America, that's sort of the hotter regions of the world. But I'm sure there's more to it than that. It's probably a more complicated topic. However, a lot of American food that isn't from the South isn't spicy. It doesn't really give you that sensation of spiciness or hotness that you might have. And even though that's a really, really popular thing in lots of cultures all over the world, food is spicy in pretty much all of Asia, in a lot of Central and South America, right? There's just so much spicy food all over the world. Lots of parts of Africa eat lots of spicy foods. Some places are even way, way spicier than you can even find in other parts of the world, but spicy food is pretty common. However, a lot of people from the US just don't eat spicy food at all, especially if they're from certain parts where it's even less common. I think parts of the country like in the Midwest, which is sort of Michigan, Wyoming, the Dakotas, I'm trying to remember my US geography, But there's a bunch of states sort of up there, Iowa probably as well, that don't really eat spicy food at all. And then in places where there is a little bit more mixing of cultures and people, there's a little bit more spicy food, but it's typically for certain restaurants. A lot of people also get into spicy food, like they try a hot sauce of some kind and they eat and they start putting it on all of their food. And so it's totally a normal thing. But it's also very normal to find people who don't eat any spicy food at all. A good example is a lot of my dad's side of the family do really like spicy food. They'll eat chilies and hot sauce and they'll really enjoy it, especially like really spicy ones. However, my mom's side of the family is not as much of spicy food eaters. For a long time, my mother would start to sweat, like physically sweat, have water come out of her skin on her face. That's a very weird way to describe sweat, but that's what it is. When she ate normal black pepper, which is not spicy. So we would sometimes make fun of her for that. However, some people just don't have the tolerances for spicy food, which is totally fine, right? There's nothing wrong with that, obviously. Um, but then I do like spicy food, especially because I've, I've eaten a lot of food from different parts of the world. And so I've gotten used to it in some way. I also eat a lot of Mexican food, which has a default spicy level, right? The not spicy in Mexican food has spice in it. Right. But it's considered to be not spicy, um, as a baseline. And so I've gotten pretty used to it. I don't like to eat things that are really, really spicy just because. I prefer them to be spicy in a good way, to have a good flavor, and that's spicy to add sort of a chili flavor of some kind. I especially like the sort of the fresh chilies, things like jalapenos or serranos are really good chilies just because you can still taste their freshness usually when you have them. But then also things like habaneros, there's lots of different kinds of chilies that I do really quite enjoy. Right now, the spice that I'm enjoying are these, they're deep fried habanero pieces, or habanero as they probably say them in English. And they're really, really crunchy and crispy, and obviously they're really spicy. And the oil that they come in is also really spicy and just so delicious though. It adds a lot of flavor of the chili, of the pepper. Um, by the way, we use the word chili and pepper pretty interchangeably to the point where it can be confusing, especially for, um, speakers of languages that have a huge variety of chilies and peppers, like being an important thing. Um, in fact, we call there's the bell pepper, uh, which are the sort of. They're kind of like almost like squarish, right? They're kind of like a little box of what is like, basically it is a big chili, but it is not spicy at all. Like we call that a pepper, but then also a jalapeno pepper is also a pepper, even though it's also a chili. And it's a whole thing. Cause we, like we names get changed for foods all across the world. So it's a little weird anyway. Um, I quite like spicy food is what I'm trying to say. And I also like to find the salsas or the sauces that, that are a good kind of spicy. I remember there's, I have a memory specifically of this one kind of, of sauce and salsa that I really enjoy. Um, I don't know where it's from. It's called Thai true, um, is the brand, but I think it's actually from the U S I don't think it's a Thai brand. Um, but it's like, it's a Thai style, I believe of sort of sriracha or sriracha. I think there's an extra R in that word. Um, and it's really, really good. It adds a lot of great flavor. Um, but it's also really spicy. And so it's a lovely mix there. I also think it's really interesting what spice is because spicy food, like we're not supposed to like spicy food. It's a defense mechanism that the plants evolved to repel mammals, right? So it's the animals that were eating the peppers or the chilies and then leaving the seeds right there. And so they wouldn't grow more plants. And so some plants developed this, what's called capsaicin, this sort of chemical that they have inside them that mammals perceive as, basically it triggers the same sensors in your body that fire does or heat does. And so it literally does make your body think that your mouth has something like hot inside of it, like it's sort of on fire. And that's why the, That's why it feels sort of like there is extra heat, right? Your body gets warmer because your body is sort of tricked into thinking that there is some sort of fire happening inside your mouth, which is really interesting, I think, because there's literally a chemical inside this food that tricks your body into saying, hey, you're on fire, basically. And that's what we perceive as spiciness. But birds, I don't think, can feel the spiciness at all. They don't react to capsaicin like we do. And that's the whole point, because birds can eat chilies, and they can carry the seeds far, far away, and they can leave the seeds all over the world, and the chilies can grow more, because that's the whole point of evolution, right? To keep growing your species, your kind, or whatever it is. There's also other kinds of senses that are accidentally triggered by different kinds of foods. For example, stevia, which is a plant that tastes sweet but does not have sugar in it. It is basically tricking our body into thinking that we are eating something sweet because the chemicals are sort of similar. It's not sugar. It's not actually sugar. It just sort of tastes like it is sweet, which is interesting. There's also a couple others, right? Mint or peppermint kind of activates your cold sensors, right? So it feels like there's something cold inside your mouth because it's minty, right? That's that minty, fresh sort of flavor that we think of. There's a couple others. There's wasabi or horseradish. Triggers are sort of our nose sensors of sniffing, of smelling. What are they called? Olfactory sensors, I believe is the official word, but our sense of smell that we're eating something kind of poisonous or noxious. That's a good word. Noxious means sort of poisonous or really bad for your digestive system. And it makes you sort of feel like that. And so that's why it kind of feels like there's a burning in your nose. And there's also the Szechuan peppercorn. I don't know of anything else that does this, but the Szechuan peppercorn is a kind of peppercorn that essentially triggers your movement sensors in your mouth. And so it feels like your mouth is sort of buzzing or moving. And so these are all different kind of versions of spicy, right? There's cold spicy, sweet spicy, movement spicy. And I just find that super interesting that there's foods that sort of trick our bodies into thinking a different thing is happening. And so that's just what I wanted to share here, I guess. Um, and yeah, that's all that I have here for today on spicy food. I hope that you enjoyed listening to this episode and I will see you again tomorrow for a whole brand new episode of a daily dose of English. See you then. Bye.
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