The thing about chili peppers is that they're not healthy (have medicinal benefits) in the way peppercorn and long pepper do. Capsaicin can be harmful in large quantities, IIUC.

There are South Indian foods and snacks like venpongal and methu vadai that use whole peppercorn, not chili peppers. Tomato is another colonialism byproduct, but there are still people who make versions that use lemons instead of tomatoes. A common homemade drink for sick people is made from grinding dried ginger, coriander seeds, and black pepper. These are all daily foods. But you're right, few households or restaurants are 100% free of these 400 year old import crops.

Obviously, chili pepper is used where peppercorn or ground black pepper used to be, for the reasons in the parent comment. It also makes sense that black pepper would have been used in various dishes because it enhances the potency of the medicinal properties of turmeric by an order of magnitude. It wouldn't be hard to go back to black pepper, I imagine, with a little retooling of recipes to rebalance flavors.

I don't subscribe to the opinion that all "imports" are bad, and that everything indigenous was miraculous and glorious. For goodness' sake, you probably typed your message on a Chinese-made device in a language that is not your mother tongue, as did I. That doesn't make us less of anything, does it?

Even the quintessentially southern Idli is rumoured to be a 12th century import brought down to the south by migrating Saurashtrians. (Mentioning this over other theories, since it seems to have the strongest documentary evidence). That isn't going to stop me enjoying my Idli with Sambar (which too is apparently a culinary import!).

By and large, cultural exchange makes the world a richer place. Are there unsavoury parts to human history? Yes. Even the Cholas (for example) conquered and colonized lands far away from where they were born, did they not?

You seemed to have misunderstood what I was saying.

I was pointing out that specifically in the case of chili spice, I don't think it's good for the body. There are data to support the idea that eating large amounts of capsaicin is harmful to the body: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/chili-peppers#dow...

Meanwhile, go to the vitamin supplement section of your nearest store, look at the ingredients of turmeric tablets, and you'll see they have a disclaimer that they have trace amounts of black pepper to magnify the effect of turmeric.

Everything else you said is fine by me because I wasn't arguing for it or against it.

Oranges and millets probably came from China, bananas probably came from SE Asia (and these things probably before the Sangam age, which is before the Pallavas and the height of the Cholas, so clearly exchange was happening for longer than we know).

A slight correction to what you said, idli came from a Pallava king in the 13th century who married a bride from a Indonesia who in turn brought along cooks who liked using rice. They combined rice with lentils to make idli: https://youtu.be/7pxEXHxSQzU

To be clear, I know that rice has been grown in South Asia since the time of the Indus Valley Civilization (>= 4500 years ago), but all I'm saying is specifically about idli.

Apologies, it looks like I indeed misunderstood what you were trying to convey.

> Capsaicin can be harmful in large quantities, IIUC.

Citation?

Pepper spray is used because it's really painful but isn't actually harmful.

Well too much of anything is harmful. If it isn't, it isn't "too much".

In the same vein, too much of anything creates black holes.

Adding so much pepper you get a black hole would definitely risk your tip.