The science of chili peppers

Mary Roach is one of my favorite authors, and her recent article for Smithsonian Magazine is no exception. Roach travels to the remote territory of northeast India in order to witness and sample one of the world's hottest chili peppers: the legendary Bhut Jolokia.

The chili pepper's heat is a form of silent chemical warfare. As Roach points out, a chili pepper's job is to drop seeds and make more chili peppers. When faced with hungry animals, the plants can't run away - but they can bite back.

Capsaicin is the key ingredient that provides the heat in chili peppers. It hurts - sometimes it hurts a lot - but it isn't damaging the way that a poisonous plant can be damaging. The heat of the chili pepper is just an illusion. It tricks your pain receptors into firing, so that your body registers "room temperature" as "painfully hot." In Roach's words, "The chili pepper tricks you into setting it free."

I used to be a real wimp when it came to spicy foods. But a few years ago I started adding tiny amounts of chili-garlic sauce to my food. I found that over time I would have to add more and more in order to get the flavor. By this point I'm hardly a macho Queen of the Spicy, but I definitely have a higher-than-the-average-white-American tolerance for spicy food.

This process happens because "Just as bagpipes and muskets may damage auditory nerves, capsaicin gradually destroys the pain receptors that respond to it." Which is a somewhat alarming thought, but unlike the auditory nerves, I don't think we really need our pain/taste receptors as badly as we need our hearing.

The Bhut Jolokia clocks in at between 500,000 and 1.5 million Scoville units. Personally I'm happy with jalapenos, which are a measly 4,000 Scoville units. But I love knowing that those super-hot peppers are out there somewhere!

Image courtesy Flickr/camknows