Sharon Van Epps

I didn’t always love white rice. Raised on my Southern grandmother’s cooking, I grew up thinking of rice as an “instant” food — something Grandmother Maye dumped on the plate next to my pork chop on those nights when she didn’t have time to make mashed potatoes. White rice constituted a cheap, bland filler, made interesting only once or twice a year, when Maye indulged her Cajun roots and dished it up with chicken gumbo.

The history of the spice trade is a tale overflowing with adventure, violence, and greed. Once the world’s largest industry, the hunger for spices spurred global exploration, and the urge to control those valuable commodities sparked wars. Today, with salt and pepper ubiquitous on every table, and bottles of affordable seasonings stocked 10 deep on the shelves of every grocery, you might think that the spice business has been drained of intrigue — but you’d be wrong.

According to conventional wisdom, white rice is a tasty, versatile starch that’s bad for you, while brown rice is a good-for-you grain that tastes bad. But is the difference between the two really so straightforward? Let’s start with the basics: There are more than 40,000 cultivated varieties of rice — each with a brown form.

When you’re cruising through the mall or racing to your airport gate, a sudden whiff of cinnamon smells like temptation. While nobody would ever mistake a sugary Cinnabon roll for health food, you might have heard that the spice in that decadent pastry is good for you — so good that some health experts recommend swapping cinnamon for sugar in your coffee, including the folks at the Cleveland Clinic.

Although I grew up in the Arizona desert, in many ways mine was a Southern childhood. After my parents’ divorce, a few plot twists worthy of a Carson McCullers novel delivered me at the age of 4 into my grandparents’ care. My Grandmother Maye, originally from Arkansas, still spoke with the thick drawl of her youth, and cooked as if she still lived in the Gulf Coastal Plain.