Would you ever buy flour, tomato or meat without checking in your laboratory the protein content, the Brix degree or the percentage of lean meat? Certainly not!
Conversely, when it comes to spices and herbs and specifically to black pepper, buyers’ focus is very much on food safety and on price, and very little on the physical and botanical parameters which are in one-to-one correspondence with the production yield and hence with the fairness of the price charged by spices’ suppliers.
Why quality parameters do really matter
Remember: the quality parameters for black pepper are volatile oil and piperine because they are associated to production yield. Just like any other industrial ingredient, black pepper’s production yield and fair purchase price are strongly correlated.
Moreover, the colour itself of the ground pepper is the first clue to its overall quality: unexpectedly, the lighter it is, the better!
to be continued
