dailyO
Life/Style

Pepper has more health benefits than you know

Advertisement
Kavita Devgan
Kavita DevganMar 14, 2017 | 15:53

Pepper has more health benefits than you know

Two things revived my interest in pepper, and reminded me of this nearly forgotten spice recently. The copious amounts of thandai (that has subtle notes of black pepper) I ended up downing in the followup of Holi, and a talk on Indian food’s history that I heard during the "Tasting Symposium" recently held in Delhi.

The symposium was an interesting attempt to dig deeper into the science behind ancient Indian food practices and their relevance in today's times. I learnt a lot of unknown (to me) food trivia there, like the fact that it is actually Central Asians who emphasised and taught us Indians communal eating. Before that it was a closed door, almost meditative affair for us. Interesting! Or the fact that Chandni Chowk was actually world’s very first luxurious street.

Advertisement

But what really caught my attention was a fact that Gautam Anand, executive vice-president at ITC Hotels, mentioned as he crunched 6,000 years of history of Indian cuisine into very-interesting 25 minutes. He shared that red chilli, which is today such a huge part of our cooking is actually an import (Vasco da Gama brought it to our shores), and that traditionally we (Indians) are actually pepper eaters — a spice that unfortunately over the years has got so sidelined that it is now considered an import.

It’s a far cry today from days when the British considered Indian pepper so valuable that it was often used as collateral or even currency. Now, I have always been a pepper enthusiast (I add it to my morning cup of tea too), so this trivia stuck a cord! And I decided to read up a bit.

pepper_031417034040.jpg
Black pepper is actually native to India.

Turns out it’s true. Black pepper is actually native to India, primarily from the Western Ghats and Malabar region, but as it is apparently a hard spice to grow (it needs a set amount of rainfall), it’s price tends to vary a lot. Maybe that’s why it got sidelined slowly and was overtaken so decisively by chilli powder, which is both cheaper and hotter (so less goes far), but unfortunately not nearly as loaded nutritionally. The red powder most of us use in cooking these days is mostly just colour, anyway!

Advertisement

Pepper, on the other hand, is not just a wonderfully versatile spice, but is extremely good for our health too.

First though it is important to understand the difference between different kinds of peppers. A peppercorn is actually a mini-fruit; like a tomato, it goes from green to red and then black.

Green peppers are picked up and then sun-dried to get black peppercorn. And white pepper is produced by soaking the black peppercorns in bags filed with water for a fortnight until the black skin peels off and only the white seed is left. Nutritionally, both are similar, although we use black pepper more in India. Sample some benefits:

1) Pepper is antibacterial in nature, and so helps cure cold and cough. The piperine in it has a role to play in the prevention of cancer, and becomes twice as potent when combined with turmeric.

2) Piperine  also stimulates the stomach to secrete more hydrochloric acid and helps digest proteins better. Yes, that's why I sprinkle it liberally on my fried egg. By the way, it also stimulates the brain, and has a role to play in keeping depression away.

Advertisement

3) Pepper also delivers vitamins A and C, flavonoids, carotenes and other anti-oxidants that help remove harmful free radicals from the body.

There is also a third kind (of pepper): the Indian long pepper called pippali that has traditionally been valued for its medicinal applications and is the most extensively used plant in Ayurveda even today.

It has more or less vanished from our cooking even though it is sweeter and more pungent than "normal" pepper. If you are lucky, you might still get to taste a lentil stew (mostly rasam) made with long pepper or maybe even a pickle in some households down south.

Now that’s a pity as pippli is apparently the perfect spice to eat during the spring season (yes, now) to ward off the common issues that this season brings — the irritating allergies, congestion, colds and cough.

Long pepper has also been prized traditionally for its aphrodisiac properties too, and some reports also suggest that it can regulate the rate at which glucose is released in the blood, and that it helps boost insulin production. The best news of course is that now it is being studied to be used as a potential cancer treatment drug.

The secret lies in a chemical identified in it called piperlongumine (PL), which has shown activity against many cancers.

We all know that food follows fashion. Let's make pepper, particularly the long pepper, fashionable again because the benefits are far too many to ignore. Maybe it’s time to learn how to make the awesome Kandathippili (long pepper) rasam. What say you?

Last updated: March 14, 2017 | 15:53
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy