Pictured below, the author discovered a great sense of community at Vanuatu fruit and vegetable markets. It was open for business 24 hours a day. You could buy freshly cooked food at 2 a.m. in the morning and talk until you dropped from exhaustion.

Understanding migrants with diverse cultures might provide insight into youth suicide and how to prevent it.

Is this an outlandish claim or is there serious evidence to back it up?

Sanderson Media’s website has labored the point that notionally Anglo Saxon peoples generally have the worst dietary habits, poorest communication skills, not much sense of community and are notorious at putting their elderly parents into old folks homes.

If that isn’t bad enough, notionally Anglo Saxon people’s have the worst youth suicide rates in the entire world. All this information is in a book entitled, Anglo Saxons can’t communicate, which fortunately is freely available on this website.

Notably, according to a study by WHO, (World Health Organisation), the lowest youth suicide rates in the world are among the very people that Anglo Saxons accuse of spending too much time on food and conversation. This includes migrants from Asia, Mediterranean areas and other diverse cultures.

On this blog, we reproduce the list of countries in order of worst to the best, but be assured, a strong sense of community is pivotal to this social success and the preservation of teenage lives. Low suicide rates come with cultures that love a wide variety of produce, love to cook and sit and talk for hours, and love to take good care of their extended families.

How does it work in these cultures with connectability, among those that get accused of talking too much and dragging out a meal for hours on end.

When a relative is depressed, they can they always find a cousin, an aunt, an uncle, a family member in which they can confide.

Someone is needed that can help them unwind and unburden themselves.

Why did we list these tragic social disasters? Because the solution is right under our noses, right with the cultures of which we have historically been very suspicious.

If we are too narrow-minded to learn from migrants, then there is a strong possibility any depressed member of our family will not discover a sense of community exists around them.

Because even businesses are realising you can sell more stuff if you show an interest in customers.

Consider the girl in my local bank in Springwood, Brisbane, who  tried to talk to me, to improve her Banks image. I appreciated it although she didn’t  have time to talk about deep stuff.

If we are to learn anything from migrants and diverse culture, it is that it is an honor to talk for hours and listen to and pass on the stories of our lives. Furthermore it is wonderfully innovative to try to enjoy recipes, produce, food preparation, the eating of food with friends and the enjoyment of conversation as almost an art form.

Empire builders with no relationship skills

Westernised people banging on about building empires and making great profits is so trivial by comparison to relationships and family preservation.

If you have doubts, ask anyone who has a depressed family member or who has lost friends to suicide. It is advisable to build up those relationships and crank up that sense of community and see what a difference it makes in your life, and the lives of your friends.

If you family tree is hopeless then go out and adopt some people and someone else’s family tree.

Ok lets sum this up: Anglo Saxons can learn from migrants but be warned. Sticking to boring foods and culture and being a standoffish snob will never teach your children to communicate and have a sense of community. Therefore have a go at this idea: Turn off the television, select an exciting new recipe, drag your children into the nearest produce market, prepare the ingredients and cook with your children. Yep, communicate in a talking kind of way. It is a talking method better than hairy animals, which never gather in kitchens and historically only do takeaway foods.

Here are the youth suicide figures from the World Health Organisation:

Some races, like the Pacific Islanders, have never lost their sense of community.

Family food and conversation

My local commonwealth bank did something very scary today.

As I walked in the front door, a cheery employee asked me if I needed anything and then I met Cassie, the bank teller, who engaged me in a very interesting conversation, while banking my cheque.

I wasn’t ready for this and it really took me by surprise.

My wife has often warned me not to talk too much to the shop assistants because “they will get into trouble for talking.” She is usually correct.

But at the bank, these weird bank people had turned the clock back a full 50 years to a time when we all enjoyed a sense of community and I am still trying to get over the experience.

An hour later someone called Kerry phoned and ran me through a quick survey. I was fully like soft clay by this stage.

“What was your experience at the Bank like today and how can we improve on it?” she asked this astonished writer.

Firstly I wanted to know why the bank people wanted to conduct small talk, and then follow up with a phone call.

“Well each day we pick a customer at random and you are the one for Thursday.”

I told Kerry I had been writing on a 21^st century phenomenon, our lost sense of community.

I warned her that, if the bank kept up this friendly approach, people would come to expect friendly conversation at all times.

I gave her my crazy request for a coffee machine in the bank’s foyer, and the one about providing seating for people in the queue, in case people have back pain.

I don’t expect a coffee machine to turn up any time soon. Chatty staff are enough for me.

No one knows we have lost this ability to connect

Now this is the scary part: Most people don’t realise they have lost this sense of community.

Westernised people and notionally Anglo Saxon peoples have lost it however if you have a Mediterranean background, or a Pacific Island origin, you may still enjoy chatting to everyone around you.

Chatty people can really annoy their work colleagues however. Take the case of my good friend Ruth who works in the public service, a very Anglo Saxon public service. Recently they were thinking of sacking her for being too friendly. Years of cold, rude, standoffish treatment had not dented her warm south American heart, until they gave her the first warning for being too friendly.

“Tell them you have an editor friend that is writing extensively on this subject, and he wants an interview will all of them,” was my excited request.

Ruth passed it on and the cold public service tsunami subsided, turning into a mere ripple.

I used to work in the public service so I knew what ethnically challenged people are like. An interview with politically correct grumblebums was like being able to enter communication heaven. Maybe I didn’t use enough tact.

It separates us from the hairy animals

When I was young, 50 years ago, country towns and cities had plenty of seating on its main streets. Civil planners considered that people had a right and an inclination to sit and talk in an extended fashion. Hairy sweaty animals don’t do it so we should do so.

It was a glorious time when people listened to stories and retold rubbish of their own. It was better than television. It was direct communication art, part of being in a living play, which the participants may have taken all for granted.

So if you have migrants in your community, you may be very blessed. Why are the friendly shopkeepers so popular?

If you have a Greek butcher, he will talk to you; or a Turkish baker or an Italian grocer, they will all listen to your stories and give you their ideas, totally free of charge.

It was a sense of community, making even the most unusual folk, feel they were worth something.

In many English speaking communities, you can’t pay money to be listened to, so many go to their local doctor and whinge and waste his time.

Surveys indicate that if more than 50% of people in doctor’s waiting rooms had someone to talk to, they wouldn’t be there and would probably not be ill.

People vote for rudeness

In Australia, England, Germany and France to mention just a few, political parties have sprung up based on the fear that migrants will change the local way of life.

Politicians have been elected to parliaments as a reward for parroting things like, these migrants stick together and won’t assimilate.

Anyone that cared to make friends with Asians peoples, Indians, Sri Lankans, Pacific Islanders and many other groups, might have appreciated the variety of food and the sense of community that comes with it.

Lets make this easy to understand, and join the dots, because it forms an unbelievable picture.

Peoples that love variety in food, enjoy cooking and eating together, usually include good wine, beer and extended mealtimes with plenty of communication, have the lowest youth suicide rates in the world. This is fact and it comes from the UN’s World Health Organisation.

There is much less depression among these folks. They are not totally devoid of problems however there is always someone around who can share the problem and a problem shared, is a problem halved.

I must admit my growing up years were very strange. I felt like an ethnic that was raised in a totally Anglo Saxon country community of Queensland. People I knew were suspicious of Australia’s first inhabitants, the Indigenous Aborigines, and also any migrants that usually ran cafes, restaurants and grew and sold fruit. You didn’t talk about these groups, unless you threw in a joke.

Number one Aussie complaint: they spent too much time talking to their relatives. While Aborigines pass their stories on to their next generations, Australians generally don’t.

In fact some of our most celebrated explorers, Burke and Wills, perished from hunger and thirst in the Aussie outback, because they were suspicious of the local Indigenous people, and didn’t wish to talk to them. That’s a bit like a suicide, emanating from prejudice.

Masterchef can fix some things but not everything

Now if you take an old fashioned concept…………people with great produce, cooking and talking and eating together; what do you get?

You get an incredible social reaction that is most amazing in notionally Anglo Saxon communities.

Basically you are encouraging people to stop buying takeaway junk food by going back to the old days of cooking, talking and eating together.

This website has already run a story on the Masterchef phenomenon and how it gained higher television ratings than for the grand finals of any of Australia’s football codes. We strange, non hairy, non communicating types, shocked ourselves that it could be more fun to buy exciting produce, collaborate with people on new recipes, and cook and eat together and communicate in a talking kind of way.

Way to go dudes. Hello out there……………..most non Anglo Saxon communities have never lost their sense of community and have been doing this for thousands of years. In my next post, you get the WHO youth suicide statistics and it is a scary picture.

Just hug the next chatty stranger that wants to connect and talk to you, with no ulterior motive. My next major writing will be on the value of eccentrics, and what vital public service they provide.

Will it solve everyone’s depression problems? Probably not, but at least the Anglo Saxon empire can at last see where it was severely lacking. It’s not a total solution but it is a start to the solution. We can at last see why migrant ladies love to cook  a fancy dish and share it around. Should depressed people start cooking in earnest and begin sharing the food around? It wouldn’t hurt.

John Sanderson is a photographer, writer and editor who has spent a lifetime connecting with and challenging his readers.

He recreates history in a way that you’d think he lived way back when.

He has just spent two years writing, editing and composing Australia’s most widely circulating national produce and farming newspaper, National Marketplace News.

John was nominated for journalism’s Walkley Award a few years back, so your news could not be in  better hands.

Here is John’s definitive manual on communication to assist you to examine your “talking gene” and discover its state of health.

ASNHTC – Chpts 1-14

ASNHTC – Chpts 15-25

Anglo Saxons need your help. Can you please assist us stiff-upper-lip folk to discover and value our extended families. While we have your ethnic attention, we need your help to string a meal out for several hours, during which time we might learn to talk for extended periods.

An excellent goal might be for us to stop thinking about protocol and building monuments and actually find out what is in the hearts of our friends and family, instead of just banging on about procedural matters and infrastructure creation.

While you ethnic minorities are at it, can you please help us find our talking gene so that improved relationships might discourage some of our youth suicides and prevent some of us from getting plonked into aged care facilities. It happens when us elderly Westernised folk are seen as part of the infrastructure we helped to create.

So what does making a meal last for two hours have to do with alleviating depression, longevity, crook national symbols and the exportation of convicts to Australia and the USA?

The Talking Gene connects this by way of humor, cartoons, insightful quotes, a bit of sadness and funny relationship stories along the way. You will never again feel the same way about logging your family tree, bureaucrats, ethnic minorities or Australia’s first settlers. You owe it to your talking gene to read this.

John@sanderson-media.com

A coffee table book that will provoke conversation

(This writing remains the property of John D Sanderson, Sanderson Media, Springwood Queensland, Aust, 4127)

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A big thankyou to my son Peter for the cartoons he produced when aged 13. Appreciation to my beautiful wife for teaching me to make a meal last long enough to enjoy the conversation.

Contents:

1     Anglo Saxons need your help

2    Trying to break the cycle

3    Penguins can’t understand Romance

4    Reading a living page

5    Building relationships and pointless monuments

6    Conversation versus efficiency

7    Reading your family tree

8    How to dig up your tree with love

9    Swapping stories with Turks and neighbours

10  Coffee talk

11  What our genes tell us

12  Genetic research at your local flea market

13  Oracy from a Greek blacksmith

14  Using dental talk as a barometer

15  Humble dung throwing promotes communication

16  Revenge on Bob the bully

17  Why some can’t connect

18  Standing on one leg for Captain Cook

19  Upgrading social and business genes without surgery

20  How to be sure you can’t communicate

21  Can’t talk to big spending tourists

22  Bureaucrats can’t talk

23  Excusing the debacle

24  The Talking Gene and teenage suicide

25  Communication is good for your health

Communication and eccentrics are all good for your health

Earlier in Australia’s proud Anglo Saxon heritage, some of us began looking obliquely at migrants. The Government promoted it by devising the white Australian policy. Backed by churches, this cultural barrier told the average person that they didn’t have to end up like “those strange migrants.” You had this empire to imitate.

However back then you couldn’t migrate unless you passed an English test that resembled riding a rampaging bullock while simultaneously singing Waltzing Matilda. You had to sing it in tune and the bullock needed to bellow the right notes.

And so it was that an academic test was devised to trip up those with a non English background who didn’t know about snakebite, shark attacks and the famous cricketer Don Bradman. I think the bar was set this high because some Aussies were a pretty intolerant lot and we didn’t accept changes too well. You might have noticed this in Australia’s early treatment of Aboriginals, and Chinese folk in the gold rush days that has been well documented. Hey Aboriginals were the first Australians but we might not have noticed that.

And so it was that our forebears made comments unworthy of a fruit bat…………. “they (migrants) don’t live like us, and they hang out with their ethnic groups too much.” “They should learn to do what we do, singing Waltzing Matilda while roping a bullock….. eat rubbish meat pies with sauce and turn their chops into charcoal.”

Has this got anything to do with Anglo Saxons not being known for the talking gene?

Migrants know how to work hard and  accumulate shiny junk however, in their favour, they value their relationships and keep a sense of community. On the other hand we singing, roping, bullock-riding Anglo Saxons value shiny junk and generally dislike a sense of community.

As recently as the 21st Century, quite a few Australians were still rabbiting on publicly about how migrants eat funny stuff and have values that will change our way of life and the things we treasure forever, like famous cricketers, taking sickies from work and dodging sharks in the surf.

Sure migrants sure don’t live like us but in many ways they live better than we do, with more variety in food, more conversation at meal times, more reunions and more quality relationships.

Why did Australia embrace the Masterchef phenomenon? Because they were very slow to learn from migrants who were already celebrating food, cooking together and longer mealtimes.

Add to that, family values, the benefits of extended family, respect for the elderly and a reluctance to plonk old folks in nursing homes. Add that, kids that generally don’t want to kill themselves because there is always someone prepared to talk to them. Yep, those migrants and ethnic minorities sure don’t live like us Anglo Saxons.

Would you like a slice of that? Would you like it if you could convince your rellies to exercise their talking genes?

Mentoring eccentrics

Now here’s the bit about valuing eccentrics. When my children were quite young, my second daughter took great interest in serenading our chickens which could not escape because they were firmly tucked under her arm as she walked them around the house, talking and singing. Her next sign of communication and eccentricity was to regularly climb our huge mango tree and sing and play her school recorder to the birds that parked thereon. My youngest son, when he reached the age of three, started making up songs about anything mundane or traumatic that happened around the house. He then invented the word congrubulate, the first of many, and presented himself as a cartoonist, singing and cartooning the daily lives that went on around him. To prevent laziness I got him, aged 13, to do the cartoons for this book and regularly supplied him with Mad magazines. I was doing something that would benefit me for the rest of my life. I was mentoring some eccentrics.

If you are taking notes, this is how I encouraged creativity and spontaneity in my children. I tried not to say things like, “don’t lean, don’t run, don’t lurch, don’t drool, don’t laugh, don’t fiddle, don’t be silly, don’t climb, don’t fall, don’t be as mad as a hatter.”

Value of eccentrics

American researcher, Dr Augustin de la Pena, at the San Jose Medical Centre in California, has linked long-term boredom with ill health. He said that the human brain functions best when it processes copious amounts of data. To starve the brain of data (variety) and conversation is to spark a series of physiological reactions producing stress and depression.

I would like to go further by proposing that quality and even eccentric conversation is a way to relieve the mind of boredom.

Remember the last time someone said: “I’m depressed because my family won’t stop talking to me or forcing me to laugh?”

Me neither.

Irritating people until they laugh

So this is the spot where eccentrics can step forward and take a bow.

My theory is that real characters and eccentrics help to keep the world alive. One of Australia’s experts on humour, Dr Jessica Milner Davis, at one time an honorary research associate with the University of New South Wales, says that ten minutes of hearty laughter can lower the heart rate and blood pressure for 45 minutes. Even smiling has benefits for the nervous system, hormonal levels, muscle metabolism and respiration

Crazy people may help keep us alive if we talk to them and laugh with them. It has been rumoured that children laugh an average of 146 times a day, but adults struggle to laugh an average of 4 times a day.

A Harvard Medical School researcher was quoted in USA Today as saying that billions of dollars could be saved if hypochondriacs who run up 15% of US medical bills, were identified and treated in brief therapy groups. In other words, would anyone reading this please mentor all the hypochondriacs in their family or social circle.

Quality conversation and good relationships can save squillions on medical bills.

Lack of conversation can damage the body

Prominent author and health expert, Jillie Collings agrees with the aforementioned comments by saying, “the brain is just like a computer. If it doesn’t get enough input, it malfunctions, and as a result, damages the body.”

To feed our computer brain through eyes and ears by conversing means we don’t sit in front of a computer for hours and hours where our imagination dies and our communication genes get soggy and switch off.

In the London Daily Mail, Andrew Wilson quotes Alan Caruba, from the Boring Institute in America, recommending that: “The three most important key points are to develop the reading habit, find a new interest and involve yourself with groups of people.”

I hereby recommend that obtuse characters be utilised and eccentrics put to work. If you are safely crazy cultivate it, don’t hide it. You will save lives.

It is worth repeating a quote from Polish magazine Wprost which reported a study by the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. “Up to 74 per cent of respondents would not do business with gloomy people and 69 per cent could not make friends with them. (hence no relationship prospects) Sad people were often perceived as hiding something. Researchers found that when we smile, more blood reaches our brain and this improves our mood,” the magazine reported.

People who tell jokes and laugh often are healthy communicators. On November 22 2005 the Courier Mail reported that humour has been found to have an effect on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, similar to exercise. It relaxes muscles, helps the immune system and reduces pain and stress. A US study found a sense of humour and laughter may prevent a heart attack. Laughter appears to cause the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to dilate or expand in order to increase blood flow. People with heart disease are 40 per cent less likely to react to humor, compared to contemporaries without heart disease. Makes you think doesn’t it. Unless individuals, education curriculums and societies teach the value of extended family and extended conversations, we won’t have the desire or skill to do any of this and neither will our offspring. At the end of our highly achieving lives our jobs will be all up to date. However we will ask why we accumulated all our pointless monuments and junk, and why crazy people with talking genes did not stress like we did?

Finally, if we are having difficulty getting our own personal family tree to interact with itself, why worry. We can connect with someone else’s family tree. Exercise your talking gene, you might be surprised at the result.

************************************

Why get excited about food and cooking?

Today TV chefs are treated like rock stars.

In Australia, the finals last year of the country’s Master Chef program was watched by 4.1 million people. It was many more than watch the finals of any football code, almost double the ratings that some finals get.

Why has this been happening around the world?

Some social commentators think we are drifting away from the Darwinist model of kicking someone’s butt in a reality type of television show.

In addition, world financial insecurity may be coaxing people to select entertainment that lets them spend more time at home, while learning the lost art of cooking and being more supportive of each other.

Those cooking shows also remind people of the sense of community they have lost. And there is a great benefit of trying  to cook with friends.

We might even develop some great conversation skills while cooking and eating wonderful varieties of foods together.

Junk food took its toll

In the past, the ease with which people bought take away and junk food, might have destroyed any ability or desire to search out good produce and cook sumptuous meals and share it with friends.

Now here’s a good sentence for people who don’t like migrants and the great variety of food they promote:

The best food and cooks and recipes can be found in countries that have not lost their love of produce, conversation skills or abilities to make a meal last for hours.

Take Cyprus for example.

This is in the centre of the Mediterranean area and this has resulted in the introduction of food from Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Lebanon, Middle East, Western Europe and Egypt.

Cypriots have gone on to create and promote their own distinctive recipes.

The best way to enjoy Cypriot food to stop rushing around madly, prepare a meal, invite your friends around, and thus prepare to sit and talk for a couple of hours. In Cyprus, the landscape and backyards are dotted with olive trees. It is a constant reminder that the Mediterranean diet has got its menu about right by teaming hot dishes with olive oil and salads that are garnished with olive oil.

Longer life with a Mediterranean diet

The World Health Organisation has had years to study health statistics and deduce that this kind of food gives you a 40 percent less likelihood of getting heart disease. The balmy summer nights in Mediterranean land gets the population to sit out of doors to eat and talk. In many areas people are sitting outside happily chatting, playing cards or listening to music up until 11p.m. In the Old Port area of Limasol, streets are blocked off every night and hundreds of tables and chairs magically appear in front of cafes and restaurants where patrons eat under the stars and appear to talk for hours.

You may not be able to change the climate where you live but at least you can restore the sense of community to your family, making it a time to celebrate variety in food, friends and conversation.  It may be of interest to non-Mediterranean folk that Greeks, due to their constant chatting and philosophizing, have the lowest youth suicide rates in the world. The figure is 2 per 100,000. Other countries that value extended families have similar low figures although Greece has the lowest. If a relative ever gets depressed, you can imagine the wide range of relatives or extended family with which they can converse and receive help and reassurance. The best option may be to visit your local grocer or wholesale market, select some produce you haven’t tried before, and a recipe, do some cooking and invite your friends around, pretending all the while that they will warm to your choice of music, wine, conversation. If the produce aisles at your local supermarket don’t have recipes and avoid talking to customers, find a small retailer that pushes produce and cooking ideas. Remember to pretend you are out of doors and keep that pack of cards handy. Opening the windows or eating on your verandah might help.

British Medical Journal and the Mediterranean diet

A study released last month in the British Medical Journal reports that consuming a Mediterranean-style diet, rich in vegetables, fruits and nuts, olive oil, and legumes, may lead to a longer life. “…higher adherence to a Mediterranean diet was associated with a statistically significant reduction in total mortality,” wrote the researchers.

Researchers found that nine components of the Mediterranean diet contributed to the benefits: moderate alcohol consumption, low meat and meat product consumption, high consumption of vegetables, fruit, legumes, olive oil, and nuts, and a high ratio of monounsaturated fats to saturated fats.

In another recent study review, the Mediterranean diet was found to be the only dietary pattern associated with a lower risk for heart disease.

Researchers analyzed 146 other studies and 43 controlled trials published between 1950 and 2007.

These recent studies add to a large body of science supporting a Mediterranean-style diet. It seems that the diet results in some of the lowest rates of colon cancer, breast cancer, and coronary disease in the world, as well as fewer problems with inflammatory conditions and menopause.

Add to that the recent news that this diet significantly reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8644788.stm

Hot’ substance in chilli peppers key to killing pain

Capsaicin causes the burning sensation in chilli peppers
Studying chilli peppers is helping scientists create a new type of painkiller which could stop pain at its source.
A team at the University of Texas says a substance similar to capsaicin, which makes chilli peppers hot, is found in the human body at sites of pain.
And blocking the production of this substance can stop chronic pain, the team found.
They report their findings in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Capsaicin is the primary ingredient in hot chilli peppers which causes a burning sensation.
It does this by binding to receptors present on the cells inside the body.
Similarly, when the body is injured, it releases capsaicin-like substances – fatty acids called oxidized linoleic acid metabolites or OLAMs – and these, via receptors, cause pain, the researchers have found.
Blocking pain
Dr Kenneth Hargreaves, senior researcher at the Dental School at the University of Texas, and his team next set out to see if they could block these newly discovered pain pathways.
Lab work on mice showed that by knocking out a gene for the receptors, there was no sensitivity to capsaicin.
Armed with this knowledge they set about making drugs to do the same.
Dr Hargreaves said: “This is a major breakthrough in understanding the mechanisms of pain and how to more effectively treat it.
“We have discovered a family of endogenous capsaicin-like molecules that are naturally released during injury, and now we understand how to block these mechanisms with a new class of non-addictive therapies.”
Ultimately, he hopes the drugs will be able to treat different types of chronic pain, including that associated with cancer and inflammatory diseases such as arthritis and fibromyalgia.

http://www.naturalnews.com/021449.html

Thursday, January 18, 2007 by: Jessica Fraser

(NaturalNews) — Capsaicin — the compound that makes chili peppers spicy — can kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells, with no side effects, according to a new study by researchers at Nottingham University in the UK.
The study, led by Dr. Timothy Bates, found that capsaicin killed laboratory-grown lung and pancreatic cancer cells by attacking tumor cells’ source of energy and triggering cell-suicide.
“This is incredibly exciting and may explain why people living in countries like Mexico and India, who traditionally eat a diet which is very spicy, tend to have lower incidences of many cancers that are prevalent in the Western world,” Bates said.
“We appear to have discovered a fundamental weakness with all cancer cells. Capsaicin specifically targets cancerous cells, leading to the possibility that a drug based on it would kill tumors with few or no side effects for the patient,” he said.
Bates and his research team found that when cancer cells were treated with capsaicin, the chili pepper compound attacked the tumor cells’ mitochondria — which generate ATP, the chemical that creates energy within the body. Capsaicin also bound to certain proteins within the cancer cells and triggered apoptosis — natural cell death.
Bates noted that his team’s capsaicin experiments resulted in cancer cell death without harming the healthy cells surrounding the tumors. The capsaicin compound also managed to kill both lung cancer cells — a standard test for new cancer treatments — and pancreatic cancer cells, which are exceptionally hard to kill.
“These results are highly significant, as pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat and has a five-year survival rate of less than one percent,” Bates said.
According to Josephine Querido, a cancer information officer with Cancer Research UK, Bates’ study is promising and needs further research. However, since the experiment showed only that capsaicin extracts killed lab-grown cancer cells, eating large quantities of chili peppers may not yield the same results in humans.

Why the addiction to chilli?

Why do some people crave spicy foods, chillies, curries, noodles and so forth while others go through life never wanting to challenge their taste buds?

Australian Chinese chef, from Sri Lanka, Jimmy Shu, has put forward a plausible theory.

After years of tempting foodies, he concludes that a palate corrupted by eating chillies and curries seems to turn a person into a discerning eater. He has noticed that the more his customers like chilli and curry, the more they need variety and spice. It’s all in the “corruption of the palate”, he says.

It is well known that chilli speeds up your metabolism, plus the hot little critters are a rich source of vitamin C and it might even work against the formation of cancer cells.

Nutritionists also claim that chilli helps fight pain and eases nasal congestion.

Just imagine it. When we put chilli in our cooking, we may be promoting good health, as well as good conversation.

Ever since the Portuguese brought chilli to India, after trading with Mexico, people have been learning to eat like the Maharajah. You also can “try it”:

“Food needs to be cooked properly and beautifully presented however I go further than that. I want people to go home and still be able to remember the taste. That is my motivation,” said Jimmy.

And if you can still remember the conversation a few days later, then the Jimmys of this world have achieved food without frontiers.

Jimmy Shu was born in Sri Lanka about 60 years ago when it was  a virtual melting pot of several continents’ flavours.

Imagine the combination of Hindu vegetarian food, exquisite curries, chillies, flavours from South-East Asia and noodles from China. It was an exciting time of discovery for young Jimmy.

Jim’s Dad, Andrew Shu, started his restaurant in Sri Lanka in 1946, just in time for Jimmy’s birth in 1949.

With Chinese parents, he was raised in this restaurant on tantalising curry and noodle dishes.  Jimmy watched his dad accumulate a large “food family,” members of which regularly went on a tantalizing food journey.  Menus were changed regularly to prevent boredom and customers appreciated it.

Years later, Jimmy found it easy to gather his own food family and impress them with variety and flavor from all parts of the continent, Asia and the Pacific.

Andrew Shu taught Jimmy how to be passionate about ingredients and condiments, tempting palates of patrons by romancing the chili, the noodle and curry pot.

He is proud to have been a part of changing the way people view curries and noodles in several countries, including Sri Lanka and Australia.

“I watched Dad pioneer soy bean manufacturing and noodle making, going on to operate one of the country’s most successful restaurants,” said Jimmy.

Mr Shu imported the first noodle machine into Sri Lanka.

Making 20kg of egg noodles each morning

Customers got a liking for noodle dishes and before long, the lad’s  morning work included making 20 kg of real egg noodles for their restaurant, Modern Chinese Café, that was fast becoming a trend-setter.

The secret was to use just the right amount of eggs to bind the noodles, otherwise it would break apart.  This daily noodle grind, far from putting the lad off food, delivered the Shu family a wide circle of friends, based on conversation and love of good food.

Jim expresses it this way: “Food has no restrictive borders. It breaks down barriers and makes people decent and tolerant. We should call this business, chefs without frontiers.”

Jimmy came to learn that the Shu family had suffered privations and economic hardships.  It apparently made them innovative and people oriented, not unlike many Chinese cooks the world over.

So what hardships influenced the trainee cook?

In between cooking, his dad worked as a silk merchant for a couple of years, push-biking his cloth wares around Sri Lanka.  Jimmy has memories of the gent pedalling behind the coke delivery truck, collecting the fuel that fell to the roadway when it was being unloaded to customers.  This coke fuelled his restaurant at night.  Andrew became well known for pioneering the manufacture of soy bean sauce, noodle manufacturing and a new dish featuring crab meat.  He had the “midas touch” according to Jimmy, and deserved his success, becoming like a “food-father,” the head of a giant “food-family.”  Getting opinions from customers became mandatory. Jimmy learnt to ask for feedback at an early age.

It was an excellent grounding and inspires the grateful son to this day.

Working at one of his early restaurants in Malaysia, a customer raved about a fish curry cooked by someone else, many kilometers away.  Fully curious, Jimmy traveled six hours to get a taste of this dish that he described as “truly divine.” It gave him more menu ideas.

Many Chinese chefs seem innovative and we think we have discovered the reason why.

Jimmy thinks it is because they were nomads for centuries, being prepared to try anything in case it made money, which it often did.

He has a theory on this. The Chinese had influences that recent British and others missed out on.

Cruel dynasties and centuries of suffering, made nomadic and wandering Chinese very versatile. They dug deep, invented gunpowder and fireworks and made explosively hot curries.

In the food department, wandering Chinese learned to be versatile and make do with what they had. Often misunderstood, they tackled the problem by being cooking innovators, tempting with spiced dishes.

Passion with a ladle and a pot on an open fire became passion and experimentation in the kitchen.  They dug deep into the world of cooking and condiments.

Excited by raw materials

Jim excitedly talks of his raw materials: “Lemongrass used to grow wild at my home in Sri Lanka but in Melbourne in 1980, lemon grass was a rare herb. I used to grab it whenever I saw it but today we have the luxury of bulk lemongrass.

“Australian lemongrass is so prolific and superior as a product that I expect the day to come when we export it back to Asia.  “Then we began using another ingredient called galangal, a type of ginger.”

“I felt like a tradesmen looking for the best materials.  “I discovered that migrants were prepared to grow the rice and herbs I needed to get authentic flavors,” said Jimmy.

It wasn’t always that easy however.

Passion for herbs resulted in Jimmy breaking the law while heading through Melbourne airport on a flight from Singapore 20 years ago.

Customs officers sniffed out some galangal (a type of ginger, a rhizome from the tuber family), stuffed in a pair of sneakers that Jimmy was trying to sneak through.

He was scolded and walked off with his head bowed, feeling like a food criminal.

Discovering galangal

Shortly thereafter Jimmy discovered Vietnamese gardeners with boxes of galangal they had grown in the suburb of Richmond. The  herb had almost brought him undone but thanks to Vietnamese migrants, he would no longer take crazy risks.

Before Jimmy Shu migrated down under in 1974, an Australian immigration official advised: “Don’t start your restaurant until you have worked for someone else.”

It proved invaluable. For four years he followed this advice while learning the trade from the bottom to the top.

“You learn best by washing dishes. It allows you to see everything that is going on. I washed, cooked and cleaned up, always looking over my shoulder to learn how things were done,” explained Jimmy.

He worked very hard, doing three jobs and saved up enough money to start a restaurant joint partnership called Shakahari, in Lygon Street, Carlton in 1982.

After a short time they opened a second restaurant, then a third, and a fourth, until Jim had a total of eight under his belt.

Four were in Melbourne, one in Alice Springs, one in Darwin, with two in Malaysia.

People quickly voted with their feet, knives and forks

Take Melbourne’s very popular, first-ever noodle shop in Claredon Street, South Melbourne. It is not surprising that Jimmy worked there back in 1984. He developed new ideas and put them to work for patrons at his next eight restaurants.

“I was grateful that migrants are quick to come on my food journey but it doesn’t take long for the rest of the population to catch on and make our menus very popular.

Avoiding boredom in Darwin and the Alice

Darwin and Alice Springs are apparently easy places in which to get innovative. Both have large migrant populations with Asians always prepared to go on a food journey.

Jimmy named both restaurants Hanuman, with each specializing in Thai and Tandoori cuisines.  Inner Brisbane has 166 food outlets offering curry and many also feature noodles. Sydney by comparison has 447 and Melbourne has reached 475.

Migrants and yuppies have helped make Australian foodies very cosmopolitan. They’ve been spoilt and now they come to expect it.

It’s not surprising that Jimmy Shu has been appointed as one of two food ambassadors for the Northern Territory.

The other official NT foodie is Athol Wark, of South African background, a bush tucker expert and senior lecturer at the Charles Darwin University in Alice Springs.

He recently returned from the USA where role of food ambassador had him promoting Australian and definitively Northern Territory produce such as barramundi fish and lobster.

Jimmy did similarly back in 2005. Exquisitely presented food gives tourists an additional reason to flock to the NT and the Government recognizes this.

Hence, tourists are getting their taste buds tantalized at the instigation of Territory officials.

Countless chefs and restaurants recycle ideas but not everyone sets the food agenda. Aussies are very welcoming of restaurants that set the agenda and refuse to blend with the furniture.

It brings palates alive and sets the tongues wagging, very necessary if you are to have food without frontiers and many overlapping food-families.

There is so much diversity in culture on this earth that someone must have wished for a  cooking competition to settle disputes between nations, reports John Sanderson.’

Notice how sport gives disadvantaged countries the chance to unite and feel good about themselves and make up for injustices. Just imagine the Iraqi soccer team practicing their little hearts out, hoping their efforts bring peace. Could it work for those that love fruit, vegetables and cooking.

Visiting northern Cyprus

With this in mind I visited Cyprus, my wife’s country of origin with its rolling mountains of limestone that can make your heart race if you are an expatriate. I was looking forward to seeing vineyards and paddocks of okra. We were staying in the home of my brother in law in a suburb of Limasol (Lemesos), and my brother in law’s brother in law had agreed to accompany us to my father in law’s lost village, one of many taken by a Turkish invasion in 1974.

We drove north to Famagusta and soon had to pay a car insurance tax to Turkish guards at a border crossing. It was hot, balmy summer holiday weather and the Turkish personnel all looked unenthusiastic. They were collecting road tax in their steamy, non airconditioned roadside booths while their friends were frolicking in 35 degree heat on Turkish beaches.

Antonis Zaharia, my wife Desi’s sister in law’s brother in law, took the opportunity to niggle the soldiers. “why can’t you learn to speak Greek?” he offered. I tried to quieten him down so we’d get through in one piece and keep out of the evening news. It was exciting because we were going “home” to Desi’s lost village on the mid northern Cyprus coast.

In the outer suburbs of Famagusta we drove through narrow streets built for a horse and cart, finally emerging into the modern Turkish influenced Cyprus where the invaders have gone overboard with construction, trying  to prove they have bettered the place.

Next we encountered a modern highway that meandered along the northern Cyprus coast beside the sea where hundreds of plush two storey units have been built on land, probably without the permission from the landowners.

(pictured below, our guide Antonis, on the left, catches up with the Turkish army officer who lives in his former house and eats the figs and grapes he planted before 1974.)

Housing boom?

It appears that entrepreneurial English developers and others have been cashing in on the understandable desire to own a holiday house 100 metres from the Mediterranean sea.

Most notable was an English family that built a seaside mansion on the north-eastern panhandle side of Cyprus. The real landowners  took them to court and the British court judged that the land should be restored to its original condition. The couple thought they’d bought the land “fair and square” from someone Turkish and appealed to the British High court, enlisting the help of eminent QC Cherie Blair who had the decision overturned. They reckoned that war is war and a British man’s home is his castle, even if built on stolen land. The Cypriot owners then took it to the European Court of Justice which reinstated the first decision ordering the UK couple to pay a mountain of costs. It decided the 1974 invasion did not remove the land rights of the original owners.

With this fresh in mind we turned off the road to Famagusta and meandered north through small villages with narrow streets as we sought a short cut over the mountain range. Nowadays the bush roads were sealed but they had been a nightmare for both donkeys and bus in the old days, 35 years ago.

The Bentathaktilo Range (five fingered range) seemed less intimidating and the village of Dhavlos seemed much smaller than I’d imagined. It had been renamed Kaplica by the Turkish occupiers and there were copious signs, about 20, in case someone thought they were still in Dhavlos.

The village hugged the  base of the range in the centre of the northern Cyprus coast. On a clear day you can see the Turkish mainland.

(Desi, below, is excited at her first visit to Dhavlos since the early 1970’s)

Desi began recalling her memories:

“This was my school, and this was our corner store where we played cards and told stories. Bapau had the village blacksmith shop and he loved to grow vegetables and fruit on his plots of land, including some that were half way up the mountain range. He used to take us up on his donkey and tell us stories. After school we’d walk a kilometer to the sea, scoffing figs from trees planted by Bapau along the bush track. After a swim we’d collect mollusks from rocks around the shore, eating some raw and taking others home,” remembered Desi. For economic reasons her Dad had to swap this simple, peaceful village life for noisy smelly London in order to support his wife and seven children.

Desecrated cemetery

We noticed the Orthodox church had been stripped and a large Turkish mosque adorned the centre of town. The cemetery had been dug up and turned into a ploughed allotment to try to erase any Cypriot history. The graves of grandparents on both sides of my wife’s family had fallen victim to the excavator and plough.

We inspected the wreckage of their old houses and the former blacksmith shop. Desi’s grandpa had lived in a stone and cement house but Antonis had been a builder, his being the best construction in Dhavlos. It had been given to a chap called Sevim, an officer in the Turkish army. He was representative of many Turks in Dhavlos and the northern occupied sector. Some appeared apologetic and went out of their way to meet us and shake our hands, even introducing some of their small children. The Turks had lived quite happily among the Cypriots for hundreds of years before the invasion of 1974. Up till then they’d appreciated each others’ food, recipes and culture. My wife’s babysitter had been Turkish.

Next we four visitors went to order lunch at the massive but slightly out of place, Kaplica Restaurant which was built on the shoreline below a bank of million dollar units. This is a stones throw from the ancient village however there is a serious lack of town planning and it may have been done for show because there is only ever a handful of people eating there. There are no port facilities so paying tourists can come by boat and there is no airport so these large facilities can be paid for. There is just a winding mountain road built to take donkeys and small cars. Maybe the Turkish Government has bankrolled the huge restaurant that could easily seat 500 guests and the holiday units that could billet those people if they could get there.

Sevim drove down to the restaurant and implored Antonis to come and eat at “his” home. We had already ordered but we agreed to pop in later for coffee and fruit. Then he offered to pay for our meals but we declined because I’d agreed to pick up the tab.

As expected there was a meagre 10 people seated in the marble floored Kaplica beach restaurant that could comfortably seat the entire cheer squad from England’s cricket team.

Here we enjoyed scrumptuous fish chips and salad. We’d not tasted better on our entire trip. Most of England’s chips appear to be the frozen kind but here they were home made. The fish was sweeter and fresher than anything we’d eaten thus far. Obviously the chef had time on his hands and wasn’t subject to normal commercial constraints. He offered, “hope you like the fish because I caught it yesterday. I am sorry it is a day old but it was a bit windy out in the boat today.”

(The Kaplika restaurant gave a good view of the fog that shrouded the Turkish mainland)

After lunch we called on the former home of Antonis where Sevim had coffee and fruit ready for us. It was a pleasure to see he and Antonis reminisce over the grape vines and the fig trees that produced the best fruit we’d tasted in ages. The figs had an incomparable sweetness. So back to our original introduction for this story about culture.

Can an obvious love of produce, among mankind, and a sharing of culture, ever bring about unity?

“If you come back to live here, you can live on the bottom and I can build on the roof of your house,” suggested the ex army officer but Antonis didn’t jump at the idea. Most were full of generosity and kindness and almost apologetic about the invasion of northern Cyprus.

We were eating the delicious figs and grapes grown on Antonis’ trees and vines and drinking good Turkish coffee. In the rest of the world, this beverage serves to loosen the strings of people’s hearts as they make business deals and talk and share culture and stories. It was here that I committed my major Aussie mistake of the entire journey. I love the Mediterranean greeting. I had it down to a fine art. In a climate of equal opportunity, men and women kiss on both sides of the cheek. I didn’t study the training module because if I did, I would have learnt that you don’t ever  try to kiss a Moslem chap’s wife farewell. In almost slow motion, my relatives frantically reached out to stop me. I hope Sevim can still laugh about my ignorance because my Cypriot family have been doing that.

Finally in Turkish occupied northern Cyprus, surrounded by a mountain of memories, good food, produce and culture, the ex army gent confided: “We live as Moslems here but in my heart I also feel like a Christian.” It was a comment that bridged a lot of gaps for Antonis.

The chaps hugged and kissed as Mediterranean men do, and then we were gone.