Craving Curry

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 4, 2000 | by Stephen Goode

It certainly comes as no surprise to for the people that the reason curry dishes are the favorite ethnic food for so many folks is that these spices are addictive: They not only taste good, but they provide a natural high as well.

That's the finding of a group of researchers at Nottingham Trust University in Great Britain. They had the mostly delightful task of determining whether eating a spicy curry dish prompts the kind of symptoms addictive substances often provoke -- increased heartbeat, for example, and higher blood pressure.

Those who eat curried dishes on a regular basis build up a tolerance to spices and crave hotter and hotter dishes, the experts found, according to a dispatch from Reuters.

"What we are seeing is physiological and psychological effects combining to create an addiction," Stephen Gray, who headed the team, told the London Times. "Curry gives you a natural high much more powerful than anything you get with traditional British foods," he added, surely tongue in cheek. Few cuisines, after all, are blander than British cuisine -- another reason, probably, why curries of any kind are craved in Britain.