Sira-sira store: A gingerours life

A CLAY pot of water and a thumb-sized mashed ginger meet in the kitchen, and merrily boil for 15 minutes, exuding an exotic aroma that floats out of the window and into your button nose.

You catch the strong fragrance as you come home, and guess: Someone has an upset stomach. You have this theory that a person has a “gingerous life” if he swears by ginger and other spices to relieve his common illnesses, and even malignant ones.

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Zingiber officinale Roscoe, the scientific name of ginger, is valued in many tropical countries, both for its enhancing effect on food and as a traditional medicine and food preservative.

Although you know the many palliative uses of zingiber, no one would believe you because you’re not the Internet.

Medinalfoodnews.com, which you can find in the worldwide web, says ginger “helps relieve digestive upset or disturbances including lack of appetite, nausea, digestive spasms, indigestion, dyspepsia and flatulent colic (as carminative) as well as an expectorant and anti-tussive to help relieve bronchitis as well as coughs and colds.”

The pharmacological description continues: “Ginger contains several nonvolatile pungent principles namely gingerols, shogaols, paradols and zingerone, which contribute to its taste and which account for many of its reported beneficial health effects.”

That’s the understandable part of spices, but you wonder why spices in general are used as food preservatives.

In 1998, Cornell University biologists announced that the traditional use of spices had a merit other than making your mom’s beefsteak taste good. According to unisci.com, the Cornell researchers said spices help protect against dangerous forms of food-borne microbes.

They explained why vegetable-based recipes in 36 countries were less spicy than meat-based dishes in the same communities.

“Without spoiling your lunch, let’s just say that the cells of dead plants continue to be better protected against bacteria and fungi than are the cells of dead animals, whose immune systems cease to function at time of death,” said researcher Paul W. Sherman.

“Meat-based recipes that were developed over the centuries in hot climates need all the help they can get from antimicrobial spices, whereas food-borne pathogens are less of a problem in plant-based foods. Indeed, meat products are more often associated with outbreaks of food-borne illness than vegetables, especially in hot climates.”

In conclusion, biologist Jennifer Billing and Sherman said the original function of spices, particularly in hot climates before refrigeration was invented, was to kill or inhibit food-borne bacteria and fungi.

“But plants don’t need as much protection after we cook them,” Sherman said. “Although plants do not have a true immune system, they are protected against microorganisms by natural chemical compounds, sturdy cell walls containing cellulose and lignin, and low pH (higher acidity). These chemical and mechanical defenses continue to ward off infection for a longer time after we kill the plant. Animals do have an immune system, and it becomes defunct when they die.”

Of course, this strips away the romantic notion we have about spices being beauty enhancers, sexual prowess power-uppers and magical love potions.