h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A570566

I would like to know what everyone thinks

Interesting, I like it, it will be interesting to see what others make of it.



You might like to mention that curries tend to be excellent laxatives too

*puts a toilet roll in the fridge*

What a lovely idea for an entry

Doesnt seem to be anything else to say about it really.
Good stuff, but you've made me hungry .

Cracking entry, no serious comments at all, maybe a list of which "curry" contains most of which spices, but I'm sure this one is destined for greatness.

ChawkE

Top entry!

You could link to http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A292727, The Healing Properties of Chillies!

Just a question:
* 'You state that Cayenne, when applied directly to a wound will almost immediately stop bleeding.
* The Chillies entry says it is 'anticoagulant, helps prevent the formation of blood clots which can cause heart attacks and strokes'

Is there some contradiction? Or is it a matter of internal vs. external application?

BTW, there's also a selection of entries about garlic (hmmm to link to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A474374
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A241994

Hullo there,

I think you have the beginnings of an excellent entry here. I was raised Brahmin Hindu vegetarian, and there are one or two issues I think you might want to discuss, so I shall tell you about them, because I can.

Curry powder, the seasoning/s used in 'curries', is a blend, as you say. It is actually several thousands of possible blends. 'Curry' does not taste the same from one household to the next, so comparing Thai curry to Indian curry, let alone to the stuff served by Occidental restauranteurs is a bit like comparing solar systems...to rice.

Jains (a very strict sect of Hinduism) do *not* eat either garlic or onions. These vegetables are considered 'tamas', along with mushrooms, meat, bicycle tyres, and other non-food items. The Jain curries I have eaten have all been incredibly pungent, but not garlicky/oniony.

Curry as prepared in *my* family contained: coriander, turmeric, black pepper (not too much, now!), lots of cumin seed, cardamom (which you did not mention, though it is used a great deal), ginger, chili peppers, cinnamon, and cloves. Cloves and cardamom both have considerable medicinal use. Oil of cloves is used as anaesthesia for toothache, and as an antfungal/antibiotic/antiseptic. Cardamom (which spice gives the stuff sold as 'chai' its distinctive flavour) is a digestive aid, mild enough to be fed to babies, used to bring down fevers, and can be applied topically to cleanse wounds.

Personally, I leave the cinnamon *out*, because I think the flavour clashes with the turmeric. I use cinnamon in that other all-purpose 'Indian' seasoning, 'garam masala' (literally translated, that means 'hot seasoning', but of course, it varies as widely as 'curry powder').

You might note that cumin seeds are related to the cilantro plant, which is *not* widely used in Asia, but is a staple of hot sauces as made by Native Northern and Central Americans.

There's this stuff, called 'fenugreek', that is very nasty (bitter) by itself, and I'm not sure why it is there, but it turns up in 'curry powders' quite often. It *could* be related to fennel seed (?), because ground fennel seed is very similar in use (and to some palates, flavour, though *I* can't stand the stuff) to cumin seed. In India, it is customary to eat a palmful of fennel seed after meals, to 'sweeten the mouth' and 'improve digestion'.

One thing you don't address, which I think would really add substance to your article, is *why* hot climates and spicy food go together. There is a *reason* 'curry' was not invented in the Outer Hebrides. Alaskans did not rush out and create 'salsa'.

1) Spicy foods, especially foods that speed up metabolism, like ginger, peppers, and turmeric, cause people to perspire. In hot countries, perspiration is a matter of life and death. The more water/toxins are expelled by the skin, the cooler the body, the less risk of heat-stroke and heat-induced toxification.

2) Heavily spiced foods, even those containing no salt, are much easier and safer to preserve than unseasoned foods. Turmeric is an excellent pickling agent and preservative. In hot climates, perishable foods perish very fast. Cooking and then spicing are a way to preserve food. (Notice how crunchy Indian food isn't.)

3) Many spices are strong antiseptics. In poor, hot countries, villages may all eat out of the same bowl, with their hands. This practise has so far failed to kill most of the world, largely because of antiseptic spices (and some ritual cleansing laws around meals).

4) In hotter climates, disease germs abound and thrive in simple standing water. The food *has* to be medicinal, a survival mechanism for the species. Some cave-person worked out that digging up and eating ginger seemed to help the cave-people to die later, or less easily, or be stronger. Eating ginger was adopted before it became anything like 'cultural', because ginger-eaters rapidly became 'the fittest', and outsurvived the non-ginger-eaters.

5) Naturally, spicy foods and vegetarianism would have their roots in the same cultures. Meat that has turned bad is much, much *worse* for one than, say, rancid spinach. Meat is harder to keep fresh, harder to keep uninhabited , and harder to keep from transmitting diseases than are vegetables. The spicier foods come from agriculturally-based societies, where meat was not a primary (or any) source of food. In Central America, where the humidity is low, drying meat was a fairly realistic proposition. Anywhere hot and rainy, that is not feasible. Hot and rainy does make agriculture easier, however. Vegetarianism was an epidemiological necessity in the Indian Subcontinent; agriculture was feasible there, so it happened.

6) Religious-dietary laws and restrictions are nearly all based in common sense health needs. Pork and shellfish are not Kosher, because cookfires at the time when they were marked as 'unclean' simply could not heat them sufficiently thoroughly to remove all traces of disease. Eggs can kill a person. So, God says, 'my People don't eat eggs'. Now God's people are not being killed by eggs. That just goes to prove that God is always right... .

7) Religious-dietary laws and restrictions that are not based in common sense health needs are virtually all 'boundary definition' behaviours. UNDER the Boundary Definition, however, there are sometimes real ethno-anthropological differences, which make Banana-Eaters able to eat and digest bananas, and non-Banana-Eaters unable to do so.
Far East Asian food does not depend upon dairy products, and Far East Asian people do not digest dairy products very easily. (This is a self-reinforcing cycle, of course.) The first contact with Caucasians was, from the point of view of the Far East Asians, 'meeting people who smell spoilt'. Dairy products ferment relatively slowly in the lower intestine. This is not an odour endemic to Far East Asia.
As an Indian person, I often find Far East Asian neighbourhoods smell *fishy*, and not in a nice way. My body cannot digest animal fats or proteins to speak of. The entire Mediterranean coast smells of garlic, and it is nearly impossible to imagine Dublin smelling like Istanbul. How people smell to each other/themselves is a hind-brain We/They phenomenon.
It also recognises that the variety of terrain and available food on this planet was sufficiently varied, to create several slightly different strains of human.

8) It is not strictly true that humans are omnivorous. Where our ancestors evolved has a considerable amount of effect on how the things we eat affect our bodies. I see heavy, jowly older Caucasian men in the US, reddening up and sweating over their spicy Mexican food, and wonder whether they are trying to give themselves coronary arrests. Japanese people probably should *not* try to eat like Scots. It is all very well to experiment with 'exotic foods', but there is a sound *medical* reason why Dyspeptic British People are if they eat too much 'curry'. The seasonings in 'curry' are designed to work on a strained circulatory system, in a hot climate, with high humidity. If the *hot* properties of the foods are not sweated out, as they were meant to be, they remain inside the stomach, where they are really rather corrosive.

Our bodies know better than our mouths, what is and is not good for them. Although the medicinal points you made about the various spices you mentioned are all legitimate, it is also worthwhile to note that a mail-clerk at an office in Reading, Berks. will probably not *need* or *benefit* from the medicinal properties of 'curry', in the same way as a Nepali peasant would. The Nepali peasant would probably get little or no benefit from classic Berks. cuisine, either.

Hope I haven't been too didactic . It's topics like these that start me going... and going... and going...

Well. I'd best make some and get a , as it is GMT-7 where I am!

Cheers! Curry is good stuff...

Arpeggio, for LeKZ

Wow - enough there for Nathan to go to work on, and if this makes it as a edited entry I'd hope you'd be listed as co-researcher

ChawkE

Thanks, ChawkE!

I don't actually think I quite understand how that 'sub-researcher' thing goes. I've been here about 2 weeks and am still .

I didn't actually *do* any research. I just told him things I thought he might want to think about mentioning? I thought....

I s'pose some of the 'why' stuff falls into the info category, but I rather thought 'general knowledge' was Public Domain? Now I am seriously confused. What about places where I've incorporated other people's suggestions into my article/s? I've never used anything out of whole cloth supplied by someone else my school put the fear of Plagiarism in me, by the but I have added elements, per suggestions.

So how/who figures out the what's whose bit? Or does one trust in sub-eds and other PTB to Know?


Baffled,
Arpeggio, for LeKZ

The article we are commenting here is in Peer Review, which means we are free to comment. But I guess you know that as you have a few of your own, but anyway.....

The hope of the researcher who wrote it is that a Scout (I am Scout and more info here http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/Scouts) will comment on it and then eventually recommend it.

Once recommended a Sub-Editor (http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/SubEditors) cleans it up. Usually the researcher will add comments made in Peer review, but sometimes the sub-editor will as well.

Once it has been tidied - some need very little. It becomes a formal edited entry and gets listed on the main front page for a day (or Weekend) and you leave with a warm glow of contributing to an entry.

If your words above are your own, or researched from several sources - then they may be included in the entry - if the entry does get recommended, and it's a very good bet it will, then my recommendation is that you get a credit, as I think what you have said would enhance the entry. Many entries have co-authorship via a significant contibution by others via the forums.

If what you say above is a straight cut and paste from somewhere else, now would be a good time to say so, as you may not have realised the implications.

Anyway I'm sure most of that wasn't news to. I'm off on hols soon so good luck one & all.

ChawkE

Hi ChawkE,

Thank you for the explanation/clarification. I didn't have it as muddled as I thought.

It's probably useful to have this sort of comment appear here and there from time to time, so new users like me can be sure we're on the same as the rest of the Guide.

Cut and paste from somewhere else? I went to a School where they gathered all the impressionable 12 year old girls in the Library, and explained all about 'academic honesty', and Plagaiarism, and expulsions, and 'legal criminal offenses', and then got to the bit about the Specially Nasty Lower Intestine of Hell reserved for anyone who plagiarised, ever, even the littlest bit. I can't tell a joke I overheard without citing the source! I look up the publication-dates on magazine advertisements. I check new stationery for copyright bugs. I may be paranoid , but they are still definitely out to get me .

I wrote above whilst in a drug-induced haze from medication I was given in hospital earlier this week, stream-of-unconsciousness. So far as I know, everything in it is something I always knew (Jains' dietary habits, what *our* family put in curry), something anyone with a reasonable IQ could work out for itself (hot food makes one perspire), and/or sociocultural/religiohistorical observation (the rest of the stuff). The latter is there because I found out there was a Discipline for Sociology about 21 years after I found out I did it. Religious history is one of my major degrees. I come from a mixed-race (he was Crazy, she was Oblivious) family. I am interested in Stuff People Do, and Why They Think They Should (most of my master's degree area). Finally, medicine is something of a 'hobby' (long ago I was a combat field-medic) of mine. I try to stay ahead of the on what I should and should not eat.

See, you've made me want to go and annotate above with notes like:
1) Overheard grandmother saying to aunt, New Delhi, November 1963.
2) Observed in Mexican restaurant in Durango, March 14, 1989.
3) Worked out by adding information on ginger (source, mostly grandmother, New Delhi) with information on Capsaicin (source, mostly herbalists' leaflets at health-food stores, New York City, Denver), and indigestion (source, inferior quality 'Indian' restaurant food, London) in head (currently attached to body, Near Denver, 2001).

Those old teachers really knew how to terrorise a kid! I am certain I've been 'caught'. Actually, more people should probably be more indoctrinated about Academic Honesty than people usually are. I believe there is such a thing as 'general body of knowledge available to anyone who can read', which those persons are free to assemble, dissassemble, and rearrange however they like, provided they don't go and publish a rearrangement someone else already did first. This is why I do not understand how people can do Doctoral Dissertations on the Hebrew Bible, or Shakespeare... what could there possibly be left to say? I made up a Discipline for my master's thesis (the relationship of domestic violence to world-peace, which had not, in 1989, received any attention from either writers in the DV field, or in the Peace and Justice field... now it's old news). If I stay ahead of *them*, I can't quote them by accident. It's a survival skill, as taught by the old academicians of my Girls' School.

Amused at degree of own indoctrination,
Arpeggio, still explaining and footnoting mentally... for LeKZ

Thanks for the kind words and information. I will try to implement the changes within the next few days to my entry.

No problem, Nathan.

I really like the start you made. It's nice to know that people are starting to recognise the medicinal properties of foods and so on, which are just part of my 'cultural heritage' and which I mostly take for granted.

I'd never really thought about 'curry' before, in any specific way. So thank you for the opportunity to fire a few synapses!


Cheers,
Arpeggio for LeKZ

Congratulations! Your article has been accepted for the edited guide, and I have been asked to speak on Chawke's behalf and welcom your article into the guide! So I'll give you a little intel dump on the process wether you needed it or not to make sure you understand everything there is to know.

Usually the editors will go through the article and change some of the content, however the changes will most likely be minor (otherwise they wouldn't have accepted it into the guide!), so don't be surprised if the final product isn't exactly the same as the one that you wrote.

Also, if you are still revising the article, once it has been moved from the 'ComingUp' page it has been sent to the sub-ed who won't see the changes, so there is a sort of deadline for changes.

And lastly, by all means if there are any questions, please take a trip to my space and leave me a note, or post here again. I'll be checking back to the post over the next 3 days, after that grab me at my personal space.

Again, congratulations, and send Chawke a little thank-you note for recommending the article.

Hi, Nathan:

Congratulations on having your article accepted.

I was going to add a few comments, but then I read Arpeggio's
commentary. Arpeggio said most of what I was going to add (and
probably better than I could have).

I'll add just a couple of things about cayenne:

1. I've read that ingesting hot peppers stimulates the body
to produce endorphins, which in turn make you feel good.
Eating is supposed to be pleasurable. Thus, you will likely
repeat the experience. (For my brother-in-law, however,
peppers of any kind produce severe torment. Therefore,
he will NOT eat any food containing them.)

2. Are you sure that putting cayenne in one's eye would be
helpful? Why would the eye be any different from the
nose or stomach? Peppers are usually irritants (AH-CHOO!) when they
come in contact with sensitive membranes.

Take care

I have seen cayenne used (in small amounts) in the eye to treat macular degeneration, and glaucoma. The trick is, since cayenne is a stimulant it increases cirulation (much needed for both of these diseases) you need to combine it with herbs like Eyebright, Goldenseal, and Red Raspberry (herbs that are both good for the occular tissue and will lessen the burning effect of the pepper) to get the herbs full healing power. I am a practicing herbalist and teach anatomy and ethnobotany at a local college, to show my class that cayenne would not damage the eye, I placed 20 drops of cayenne tincture in an eye cup (like a shot glass) and proceded to wash by eye with it. Yes, it did hurt like hell--- but after 3-4 excruciating moments my eye was back to normal. In fact It felt "clearer" afterwards. Normaly we combine cayenne in small amounts with other herbs for the eye and use it over a long period of time. I have also seen it used nasaly to treat chronic sinus problems------- ala, "that is exactly the kind of thing we want to know, do people want fire that can be fitted nasaly."

Thanks for the comments, I will try to get my posting ready for the guide today and tmr.

Okay, I made the changes. Im not sure how to link to other important pages (as requested in various discussions about my entry) Is that something that is done by the editors? Im new to this so Im not sure how its done. Thank you all for your help with this

Okay, I made the changes. Im not sure how to link to other important pages (as requested in various discussions about my entry) Is that something that is done by the editors? Im new to this so Im not sure how its done. Thank you all for your help with this

this works different within GuideML than within postings (like this one here)
in postings: just write down the complete URL and wait for the Mods to **** them out , or copy&paste the complete BBC internal URL from the navigation bar of your browser. H2G2 magic converts it into a clickable link.

in GuideML:
linking to h2g2 entries: *text which shows up*
of course you have to insert the correct A-number there, and mind the double quotes (both of them are necessary)

linking to external sites:
*text which shows up*

Editorial Note: This thread has been moved out of the Peer Review forum because this entry has now been recommended for the Edited Guide.

If they have not been along already, the Scout who recommended your entry will post here soon, to let you know what happens next. Meanwhile you can find out what will happen to your entry here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/SubEditors-Process

Congratulations!