The Power of Black Pepper
Black pepper is the world¹s most consumed spice -- democratically stuffed in paper packets at fast food chains and ground fresh from pepper mills at white-tablecloth restaurants. Its bitterness, which travels up the nose and hits the back of the throat, not only seasons, it heals.
Ayurveda, Siddha, and Unani medicinal traditions all use Piper nigrum, whose Latin name is derived from the Sanskrit word pippali. The spice has its origins in the southwest coast of India, and found its way around the globe on the ancient Silk Road trading routes. In the Western Ghats region, many wild species still exist.
Black pepper is used alone or as part of a spice mixture in nearly every world cuisine, but it is particularly prevalent in South Asia. Black pepper-containing spice mixtures are used in wet or dry vegetable and lentil dishes, cooked in rice dishes, sprinkled freely in marinades for meat and fish, or fried in ghee (tarka) to extract the multiple volatile oils to season a meal. It is used widely in North Indian garam masala (hot mixture) recipes and numerous South Indian rasam podis (powders) that usually include a variety of ground and roasted spices and lentils, depending on the region.
So when is food medicine, or medicine food? For millenniums the kitchen has doubled as the laboratory, where healers created formulations based on intimate knowledge of their ecological environments. A traditional formulation entered a canon -- oral or written -- after the healers foraged, grew, harvested, cooked, tasted, consulted, and tested, repeatedly.
In Ayurveda, an ancient healing system in South Asia, trikatu (three pungents) is a common formulation used to treat digestive disorders. Trikatu contains equal parts of black pepper, long pepper, and ginger. Long pepper is a hotter version of black pepper and from the same family, Piperaceae. In the kitchen, long pepper is still used in South Asian and in North African cuisine, for instance, in the classic Ras al-Hanout (head of the shop) spice mixture.
Trikatu is prescribed to increase heat and minimize excess kapha -- one of three humors treated in Ayurveda -- and generally to increase appetite, minimize coughs and colds, improve breathing and heart problems, colic and diabetes; and to treat a range of digestive and stomach ailments. The ground powder may be ingested with honey, ghee, castor oil or another substance depending on the patient¹s condition and the practitioner¹s diagnosis.
Such ethnobotanical information on medicinal plants often aligns with medical research findings -- especially when the research employs formulations equivalent to the traditional preparation. An article in the April issue of the Journal of Medicinal Food reports that a water extract of black pepper has potential immune-modulating and anti-tumor activities in vitro. Another recent study in last June¹s issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that oil and oleoresin extracts of black pepper had strong antioxidant effects.
Another article from 2007 in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition reviews black pepper and its ³active² isolated pungent principle, piperine. Piperine, research showed, protects against oxidative damage in vitro, lowers lipid peroxidation in animal models, and enhances the bioavailability of a number of therapeutic drugs and plant chemicals. Like black pepper, piperine also possesses anti-tumor effects.
Whether you cook with whole black pepper, sprinkle it on your steaming meals, or eat it in a rasam, black pepper is good medicine you can savor.
Originally published on Zester Daily, May 2010.
