Sherman, P. W. & Billing, J. Darwinian gastronomy: why we use spices: spices taste good because they are good for us. BioScience 49, 453–463 (1999).
Billing, J. & Sherman, P. W. Antimicrobial functions of spices: why some like it hot. Q. Rev. Biol. 73, 3–49 (1998).
Galton, F. Comment on ‘On a method of investigating the development of institutions; applied to laws of marriage and descent’ by E. B. Tylor. J. Anthropol. Inst. Gt Br. Irel. 18, 245–272 (1889).
Bromham, L., Hua, X., Cardillo, M., Schneemann, H. & Greenhill, S. J. Parasites and politics: why cross-cultural studies must control for relatedness, proximity and covariation. R. Soc. Open Sci. 5, 181100 (2018).
Mace, R. & Holden, C. J. A phylogenetic approach to cultural evolution. Trends Ecol. Evol. 20, 116–121 (2005).
Freckleton, R. P. & Jetz, W. Space versus phylogeny: disentangling phylogenetic and spatial signals in comparative data. Proc. R. Soc. B 276, 21–30 (2008).
Hua, X., Greenhill, S. J., Cardillo, M., Schneemann, H. & Bromham, L. The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. Nat. Commun. 10, 2047 (2019).
Ohtsubo, Y. Adaptive ingredients against food spoilage in Japanese cuisine. Int. J. Food Sci. Nutr. 60, 677–687 (2009).
Murray, D. R. & Schaller, M. Historical prevalence of infectious diseases within 230 geopolitical regions: a tool for investigating origins of culture. J. Cross Cult. Psychol. 41, 99–108 (2010).
Sherman, P. W. & Hash, G. A. Why vegetable recipes are not very spicy. Evol. Hum. Behav. 22, 147–163 (2001).
Havelaar, A. H. et al. World Health Organization global estimates and regional comparisons of the burden of foodborne disease in 2010. PLoS Med. 12, e1001923 (2015).
Lewnard, J. A., Lo, N. C., Arinaminpathy, N., Frost, I. & Laxminarayan, R. Childhood vaccines and antibiotic use in low- and middle-income countries. Nature 581, 94–99 (2020).
McMichael, A. J. & Beaglehole, R. The changing global context of public health. Lancet 356, 495–499 (2000).
Salomon, J. A. et al. Healthy life expectancy for 187 countries, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden Disease Study 2010. Lancet 380, 2144–2162 (2012).
Kummu, M. & Varis, O. The world by latitudes: a global analysis of human population, development level and environment across the north–south axis over the past half century. Appl. Geogr. 31, 495–507 (2011).
Johnell, O., Borgstrom, F., Jonsson, B. & Kanis, J. Latitude, socioeconomic prosperity, mobile phones and hip fracture risk. Osteoporos. Int. 18, 333–337 (2007).
Kanis, J. A. et al. Variations in latitude may or may not explain the worldwide variation in hip fracture incidence. Osteoporos. Int. 23, 2401–2402 (2012).
Fisman, D. et al. Geographical variability in the likelihood of bloodstream infections due to Gram-negative bacteria: correlation with proximity to the equator and health care expenditure. PLoS ONE 9, e114548 (2014).
Coccia, M. The effect of country wealth on incidence of breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res. Treat. 141, 225–229 (2013).
Buchter, B., Dunkel, M. & Li, J. Multiple sclerosis: a disease of affluence? Neuroepidemiology 39, 51–56 (2012).
Roberts, S. & Winters, J. Linguistic diversity and traffic accidents: Lessons from statistical studies of cultural traits. PLoS ONE 8, e70902 (2013).
Guernier, V., Hochberg, M. E. & Guégan, J.-F. Ecology drives the worldwide distribution of human diseases. PLoS Biol. 2, e141 (2004).
Jones, K. E. et al. Global trends in emerging infectious diseases. Nature 451, 990–993 (2008).
Hawkins, B. A. et al. Energy, water, and broad-scale geographic patterns of species richness. Ecology 84, 3105–3117 (2003).
Kreft, H. & Jetz, W. Global patterns and determinants of vascular plant diversity. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 5925–5930 (2007).
Dunn, R. R., Davies, T. J., Harris, N. C. & Gavin, M. C. Global drivers of human pathogen richness and prevalence. Proc. R. Soc. B 277, 2587–2595 (2010).
Luck, G. W. A review of the relationships between human population density and biodiversity. Biol. Rev. 82, 607–645 (2007).
Collen, B. et al. Global patterns of freshwater species diversity, threat and endemism. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 23, 40–51 (2014).
Just, M. G. et al. Global biogeographic regions in a human‐dominated world: the case of human diseases. Ecosphere 5, 1–21 (2014).
Morand, S., Owers, K. & Bordes, F. in Confronting Emerging Zoonoses (eds Yamada, A. et al.) 27–41 (Springer, 2014).
Turner, J. Spice: the History of a Temptation (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
Kraft, K. H. et al. Multiple lines of evidence for the origin of domesticated chili pepper, Capsicum annuum, in Mexico. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 6165–6170 (2014).
Portnoy, S. in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Food Issues Vol. 1 (ed. Albala, K.) 84–86 (SAGE Publications, 2015).
Jain, A., Rakhi, N. & Bagler, G. Analysis of food pairing in regional cuisines of India. PLoS ONE 10, e0139539 (2015).
Zhu, Y.-X. et al. Geography and similarity of regional cuisines in China. PLoS ONE 8, e79161 (2013).
Kline, M. A., Shamsudheen, R. & Broesch, T. Variation is the universal: making cultural evolution work in developmental psychology. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B 373, 20170059 (2018).
Bagler, G. CulinaryDB (Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi, 2017); https://cosylab.iiitd.edu.in/culinarydb/
Iranshahy, M. & Iranshahi, M. Traditional uses, phytochemistry and pharmacology of asafoetida (Ferula assa-foetida oleo-gum-resin)—a review. J. Ethnopharmacol. 134, 1–10 (2011).
Nakamura, Y. et al. Comparison of the glucosinolate–myrosinase systems among daikon (Raphanus sativus, Japanese white radish) varieties. J. Agric. Food Chem. 56, 2702–2707 (2008).
Gupta, S. & Abu-Ghannam, N. Recent developments in the application of seaweeds or seaweed extracts as a means for enhancing the safety and quality attributes of foods. Innov. Food Sci. Emerg. Technol. 12, 600–609 (2011).
Devi, K. P., Suganthy, N., Kesika, P. & Pandian, S. K. Bioprotective properties of seaweeds: in vitro evaluation of antioxidant activity and antimicrobial activity against food borne bacteria in relation to polyphenolic content. BMC Complement. Altern. Med. 8, 1 (2008).
Cox, S., Abu-Ghannam, N. & Gupta, S. An assessment of the antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of six species of edible Irish seaweeds. Int. Food Res. J. 17, 205–220 (2010).
Lipkin, A. et al. An antimicrobial peptide Ar-AMP from amaranth (Amaranthus retroflexus L.) seeds. Phytochemistry 66, 2426–2431 (2005).
Maiyo, Z., Ngure, R., Matasyoh, J. & Chepkorir, R. Phytochemical constituents and antimicrobial activity of leaf extracts of three Amaranthus plant species. Afr. J. Biotechnol. 9, 3178–3182 (2010).
Dan, S. Antibacterial activity of paeonol in vitro. Her. Med. 9, 009 (2012).
Uddin, G., Sadat, A. & Siddiqui, B. S. Phytochemical screening, in vitro antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of the crude fractions of Paeonia emodi Wall. Ex Royle. Middle East J. Sci. Res. 17, 367–373 (2013).
Joung, Y.-M. et al. Antioxidative and antimicrobial activities of lilium species extracts prepared from different aerial parts. Korean J. Food Sci. Technol. 39, 452–457 (2007).
He, J., Chen, L., Heber, D., Shi, W. & Lu, Q.-Y. Antibacterial compounds from Glycyrrhiza uralensis. J. Nat. Prod. 69, 121–124 (2006).
Dhingra, V., Pakki, S. R. & Narasu, M. L. Antimicrobial activity of artemisinin and its precursors. Curr. Sci. 78, 709–713 (2000).
Gupta, V. K. et al. Antimicrobial potential of Glycyrrhiza glabra roots. J. Ethnopharmacol. 116, 377–380 (2008).
Chen, C. et al. Chemical composition and antimicrobial and DPPH scavenging activity of essential oil of Toona sinensis (A. Juss.) Roem from China. BioResources 9, 5262–5278 (2014).
Arzanlou, M. & Bohlooli, S. Introducing of green garlic plant as a new source of allicin. Food Chem. 120, 179–183 (2010).
Shittu, L. et al. Antibacterial and antifungal activities of essential oils of crude extracts of Sesame radiatum against some common pathogenic micro-organisms. Iran. J. Pharmacol. Ther. 6, 165–170 (2008).
Medina, E., Romero, C., Brenes, M. & de Castro, A. Antimicrobial activity of olive oil, vinegar, and various beverages against foodborne pathogens. J. Food Prot. 70, 1194–1199 (2007).
South, A. rworldmap: a new R package for mapping global data. R J. 3, 35–43 (2011).
R Core Team. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing http://www.R-project.org/ (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2016).
GADM Maps and Data (GADM, 2012); https://www.gadm.org
Bivand, R. et al. rgeos: interface to geometry engine—open source (GEOS) v.0.3-21 https://cran.r-project.org/package=rgeos (2016).
Bromham, L. Curiously the same: swapping tools between linguistics and evolutionary biology. Biol. Philos. 32, 855–886 (2017).
Mace, R. & Pagel, M. The comparative method in anthropology. Curr. Anthropol. 35, 549–564 (1994).
Harvey, P. H. & Pagel, M. The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology (Oxford Univ. Press, 1991).
Felsenstein, J. Phylogenies and the comparative method. Am. Nat. 125, 1–15 (1985).
Miller, M. A. & Paige, J. C. Other food borne infections. Vet. Clin. North Am. Food Anim. Pract. 14, 71–89 (1998).
Fisman, D. N. & Laupland, K. Guess who’s coming to dinner? Emerging foodborne zoonoses. Can. J. Infect. Dis. Med. Microbiol. 21, 8–10 (2010).
Sookias, R. B., Passmore, S. & Atkinson, Q. D. Deep cultural ancestry and human development indicators across nation states. R. Soc. Open Sci. 5, 171411 (2018).
Johnson, P. C. D., Barry, S. J. E., Ferguson, H. M. & Muller, P. Power analysis for generalized linear mixed models in ecology and evolution. Methods Ecol. Evol. 6, 133–142 (2015).
O’Hagan, A. Kendall’s Advanced Theory Of Statistics Vol. 2B: Bayesian Inference (Halsted, 1994).
Bonds, M. H., Keenan, D. C., Rohani, P. & Sachs, J. D. Poverty trap formed by the ecology of infectious diseases. Proc. R. Soc. B: 277, 1185–1192 (2010).
