It is true many of the studies in PubMed are about demonstrating what bacteria cause spoilage, and showing things that reduce these levels using natural products.
In real life things are more complicated. Spoilage depends on the food, packaging, manufacturing processes, natural or artificial additives, heat, dryness, acidity, saltiness and other things.
You can add anything to food. But to have a marketable product, after adding a spice it still has to taste good. But not just taste, consumers are sensitive to mouthfeel, texture, sweetness, osaltiness, crunchiness and maybe fifty other measurable sensory factors. You want all of them to be at least acceptable, otherwise it doesn’t matter how long the product lasts.
There has been some good safety research done on spices and foods where it is appropriate. I didn’t want to spend much time on PubMed since they tend to be specific spices for a specific food relying on consumer survey data to assess whether the sensory factors are at acceptable levels or higher. Plus showing retarded spoilage and sometimes reduced oxidation causes by other manufacturing. But they are for very specific foods: eg replacing 5-10% of flour used in certain bread products with other things. Things like sausage are more amenable to these additions, I found an article showing adding clove and cinnamon to low salt sausage reduced spoilage, but don’t have the time to spend trolling for lots of individual cases to little purpose.
Agreed. The OP was asking in context of a homemade spicy Bolognese sauce and spicy chilies: is there any evidence that the chilies added to its length of edibility left out. Noted that its acidity does. Should its being spicy give you more confidence eating it after is has been left out for hours than is commonly recommended for safe consumption?
I’m just pushing back against what I see as a folklore response: cultures have used spice, we think for this hoped for reason, and therefore it must be effective as used.
Fair enough. There was a reason spices were once insanely expensive, they made bad meat taste better and they likely did help to some degree with preservation, though likely far less than salt.
I agree with your earlier thing. The spice would not much factor into my decision. But there is no doubt spices affect bacteria, even at low concentration. Whether that matters depends on too many specifics.
True, spores are unlikely to make you sick, but I think the relevant point is really that botulism isn’t likely to be a player in this particular game anyway, so the point @Pleonast made about toxins surviving reheating still stands.
This. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to worry, quite ignoring the spice. Tomato sauce is salty and acid and takes quite a while to go bad. And five hours isn’t very long.
If anything, being spicy makes it a little less safe, I’d guess, because it might made it harder to taste if it’s gone “off”. (And yes, there are dangerous bacteria you can’t taste, but they tend to grow in the same conditions as ordinary spoilage bacteria that you can taste and smell.)
I tend to be fairly careless about food safety stuff except:
I’m meticulous about handling raw meat and keeping it away from foods that are more likely to be “clean”
I’m meticulous when i cook for the temple’s “meals on wheels” program, because some of that food may go to sick or immune-compromised people.
But just for me? If it smells okay I’ll usually eat it.
Interesting that a spice blend can seemingly replace nitrates in bacon. Sounds like France and the UK is far ahead of Canada in its available products.
Thanks Dr_P, that was an interesting article. Also, I learned the term ‘bacon butty’ which somehow had escaped me up to now. Disappointingly, after googling I learned that it’s just a simple bacon sandwich with nothing more than bacon, bread, and possibly brown sauce. Needs some lettuce, tomato, and maybe a nice fried egg with runny yolk.