SPICES – BETTER TASTE AND BETTER HEALTH
Dating back to about 1550 B.C, the Ebers Papyrus is an Egyptian scroll listing plants used as medicines which includes some of the spices such as anise, mustard, saffron, cinnamon and cassia.. Thus, spices are believed to appear around that time or even much earlier than that. About 950 B.C, Arabs merchants traveled a long way to India, China and Southern Asia to provide valuable spices to the Greeks. After the first century, Rome established a direct spice and herb trade with India, China through the Red Sea. During these times, large amount of gold and silver were exchanged for spices. Across the world and over the ages, Vikings, Goths, Romans, and Arabs all waged war over spices .K. T. Farrell defines spices as "any dried, fragrant, aromatic, or pungent vegetable or plant substance, in the whole, broken, or ground form, that contributes flavor, whose primary function in food is seasoning rather than nutrition, and that may contribute relish or piquancy to foods or beverages" (Sherman & Billing, 1998). Nevertheless, do spices only contribute to aiding the flavor, aroma or piquancy of food, if so, why spices have been significantly involved in economics and politics in human history? The idea requires much attention and many hypotheses have arisen. One proposed that spices might represent as a sign of wealth and power since it was difficult to acquire spices in the earlier days. Other suggested that spices might have a role as medicine. They might have been prescribed for aiding digestion, improving sexual ability, decreasing blood pressure (Sherman & Billing, 1999; Sherman & Hash, 2001). However, the rising question is that if spices were used to cure, why they were only used in a small amount adding to dishes. The most concreted and supported suggestion was that spices have an antimicrobial effect that can help to preserve food for a longer time other than aiding to a better taste. In order to support this idea,...