"But that's still racism and classism-" well, no, it's colonialism and Imperialism, but more importantly it's NOT A FUCKING LIE

@BadSocialism wasn't there a graph on here recently that demonstrated 50% of the people recruited by the dutch to go east in their colonial ventures never returned; you have to be making such a profit to make that worth it. Talk about a love of spices by the rich

@BadSocialism Rich Europeans fucking loved spices Up until the point poor people could afford them

@StoryWonker It's...correct

@BadSocialism I’m going to hazard a guess that the change happened roughly at the time just after the great awakening, at about the point where EIC folk switch back to wearing European clothes and working in the heat of the day.

@BadSocialism Also it's just not true that "white people" or "Europeans" (not synonymous anyway) don't season food? Never has been. One of the oldest firsthand descriptions of a mediaeval German city describes the popularity of imported spices from as far afield as Indonesia on the market!

@BadSocialism The point here is that once spices became accessible and common, it became seen as higher class to create recipes that didn’t focus on spices.

@BadSocialism They did, until the market expanded to include poor people and then the upper classes switched to a much blander and minimalist cuisine. This pattern holds true across many trends - a sunkissed tan was an upper class signifier until the middle classes could afford holidays.

@BadSocialism They also had been getting them from the middle east/india for centuries.

@BadSocialism Spices practically invented capitalism. It was the most valued commodity of the pre-industrialized world surpassing gold.

@BadSocialism The Europeans considered things like sugar and cinnamon spices, and they love using that shit.

@BadSocialism "Europeans went to Africa (and other places) not because it was poor, but because it was rich - and the Europeans wanted those riches"

@BadSocialism this is a british thing, portuguese and spanish food has a lot of spice

@BadSocialism I think it was @History20th who put it in a "could say it but won't" way - "Europeans started colonialism because European food is bland and European clothes are itchy"

@BadSocialism To be fair, sugar was used as spice, but the Dutch were interested in sugar, more than spices

@BadSocialism People really have a hard time accepting that tropical rainforests are the biomes that generate the most plant diversity.

@BadSocialism I'm pretty sure US lack of seasoning is religious in nature as spices were seen as decadent and leading to sin. Part of the late 19th early 20th century US revivalism. I mean they sought to ban soda-pop because the bubbles are intoxicating and lead to moral decay.

@BadSocialism Even Sweden had a hard on for spices like cardamom, allspice, cinnamon etc. Norway has a lot of old recipes with nutmeg. Then there's all the countries with access to fresh herbs, which also add flavour

@BadSocialism people have taken a joke about contemporary English food being bland waaaaaay too far into historical revisionism