Hot! Hot! Hot!

In the Caribbean, expect to find food spiced up with peppers or pepper sauce. Kristin Johannsen explains why

  • A shopkeeper in Japan stands in front of his seven-spice hot pepper seasoning. Photograph by Kevin Millham
  • Mounds of peppers on sale in the market in Kashgar, China. Photograph by Kevin Millham

You can call it scientific research, but I was scared.

“Come on, you can do it,” one of my friends urged. In my hand, I was holding the hottest pepper known to humankind: the pale orange Habanero of the Caribbean. I took a deep breath, popped it in my mouth, squeezed my eyes shut, and bit down. For a moment, nothing happened. I chewed, timidly. Then, suddenly, there came a delayed explosion. My head was engulfed in a searing curtain of fire like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life.

How hot is a Habanero? The hottest specimen ever tested ranked 577,000 Scoville Units, compared with 30,000 units for cayenne pepper, or the famous jalapeño‚ a mere 5,000. That’s hot.

This rating scale was devised in 1912 by an American pharmacologist named Wilbur Scoville, who wanted a way to compare the heat of different peppers. His original method was simple, though not terribly scientific: he fed each type of pepper to three human testers, and added up the ratings they gave. Nowadays, the heat units are still named in Scoville’s honour, but the testing is done with a computerised process known as high performance liquid chromatography.

My Habanero was the size of a golf ball, so it required a certain amount of chewing. With every munch, new regions of my mouth went up in flames. Was it just my imagination, or was the enamel melting off my teeth? Every swallow sent a beam of white-hot light shooting down my throat.

The heat in a Habanero, or any other kind of pepper, comes from a substance called capsaicin. In itself, the chemical is odourless and flavourless, but the burning sensation that it causes can still be detected on the tongue when it is diluted one part to 100,000 parts of liquid. Capsaicin is found only in peppers, members of the 20–30 species of capsicum plants. Other spicy foods, such as mustard, black pepper and horseradish, get their heat from totally different chemicals.

When you eat a pepper (and you don’t need to be so foolish as to put a whole habañero in your mouth), the capsaicin irritates the trigeminal cells, special sensors located in your nose, mouth and throat. Your body perceives this as pain, and responds by producing natural pain-killing chemicals called endorphins. Endorphins are supposed to produce pleasurable feelings of relaxation and well-being (if they have a chance).

By the time all those Scoville Units had finished parading themselves across my tongue, I was in a cold sweat. Every sinus in my head seemed to be emptying. My ears itched, my knees were shaking.

And as for endorphins . . . come to think of it, I was feeling pretty good. Maybe I was just relieved to still be alive.

 

It’s not surprising that a potent chemical like capsaicin has many effects on the body. Capsaicin is a diaphoretic, which means it causes the body to perspire. This is one reason why peppers are so prominent in the cuisines of many countries with hot climates. By encouraging perspiration, pepper helps people regulate their body temperature and remain cool. Capsaicin also induces the body to produce and expel mucus, and pepper is a common ingredient of folk-remedies for colds in locales as far-flung as Russia, Indonesia, and Jamaica.

“So, how was it?” one of my friends asked. I swallowed the last of that devilish Habanero and sat there, stunned. I opened my mouth to reply, and discovered that I could only whisper. Finally, I chewed a piece of bread. In a few minutes, my voice was back again.

There are several simple remedies to ease the burn, if you’ve eaten a pepper that’s too hot to handle. Yogurt, milk, or other dairy products are effective because a protein in milk breaks the bond between capsaicin and the pain receptors. Another cure is to eat a plain starchy food like rice or bread, which will neutralise the effect. Drinking water will only make matters worse, however. Capsaicin is an oil; instead of dissolving it, the water will spread its effect throughout your digestive system.

Many of the world’s cuisines make generous use of peppers. It’s almost impossible to imagine a Thai kitchen without the distinctive prik khee noo peppers, an Indian curry with no heat, or a Korean meal lacking pepper-powered kimchi. In fact, peppers are native only to the Americas, and didn’t reach Africa and Asia until the 16th century.

Capsicums are one of the most ancient food plants in the world, and have been eaten for more than 9,000 years. Scientists are not sure where the plant was first domesticated, but its most likely home was Bolivia. From there, it spread throughout the Americas to the Caribbean. Archaeologists discovered a neatly-planted row of pepper bushes in a 1,400-year-old village they excavated in Ceren, El Salvador. The plant was so highly regarded among the Aztecs of Mexico that bushels of peppers were used as a tribute for their sovereign.

The pepper’s onward travels had to await the arrival of Columbus. His expedition had set out in search of a shorter trade route from Europe to Asia, and he landed in the Caribbean, thinking he was in India. When he found the inhabitants eating spicy peppers, he concluded wrongly that these must be a new form of the black pepper he was seeking. Columbus’s first pepper was probably a variety of the present-day Scotch Bonnet, which ranks in Scoville Units only slightly below my Habanero, so it’s no wonder he was impressed. He brought specimens of the plants back on his ships in 1493, and within a very short time peppers were being cultivated throughout Spain and Portugal.

From there, Portuguese traders brought the new treat to their colonies in Mozambique and Angola, leading to the development of a deliciously fiery cuisine in West Africa. Other traders introduced peppers into India and Thailand, and from there they spread throughout Asia. In a remarkably short time — possibly only a few decades — the plant had spread completely around the world.

 

Today, peppers and pepper sauces are produced on every continent except Antarctica, and I imagine South Pole scientists are grateful for a bit of imported pepper warmth. Though India may be the most celebrated pepper-eating nation, the Thais actually hold the world record for pepper consumption, a scorching five grams per person every day.

But won’t such a potent substance destroy your stomach? Seemingly not, according to recent research. A study at Baylor College of Medicine in the United States showed that peppers do not cause digestive problems. Eating peppers may cause pain if a stomach ailment already exists, but they will not harm a healthy person. Some experts are even exploring the use of capsaicin in treating ulcers, since it stimulates the stomach to produce protective substances.

The health benefits of eating peppers have been documented in recent years by more than 2,000 scientific studies around the world. Peppers are highly nutritious. They are rich in vitamins A and C; they contain calcium, phosphorus, iron and potassium, all vital for good health. Researchers at Oxford Polytechnic in England found that adding pepper to the diet boosts the metabolism and lowers blood cholesterol. A team of Indian scientists found that eating peppers helps to burn body fat. Peppers can even help to protect against heart disease by opening blood vessels so that circulation is improved and blood pressure is lowered.

But let’s face it, people don’t eat peppers for their nutritional benefits; they eat them because they like the taste. And the ranks of pepper-lovers are growing all the time. Pepper-based cuisines are becoming ever more popular in places not renowned for spicy fare. These days, you can find Tex-Mex in Tokyo and satay in Sweden. Five hundred years after Columbus, peppers are making a new voyage around the world.

In the United States, the pepper is becoming something of a national obsession. There are pepper appreciation clubs, cooking contests for fiery foods, even whole shops devoted entirely to hundreds of kinds of hot sauces. A magazine called Chile Pepper reports bi-monthly, in full colour, on the latest developments in the world of fire. Its pages feature ads for sauces with fanciful names like Insanity Sauce, Hot Sauce from Hell and Fear Itself. On the Internet, no fewer than 195 websites for pepper aficionados are organised into a grouping called The Ring of Fire. Pepper-lovers can even look forward to an annual International Chile Pepper Expo.

After all of this, I’m convinced: peppers are good for you. Besides adding a burst of flavour to every dish they touch, they are fat-free, high in healthful fiber, and crammed with vitamins. Eat enough of them, and they will lower your blood pressure, raise your metabolism, and maybe even keep you slim. What more could anyone ask?

But I don’t think I’m going to eat another Habanero.

Funding provided by the 11th EDF Regional Private Sector Development Programme Direct Support Grants Programme.
The views expressed on this website are those of the the authors and do not reflect those of the Direct Support Grants Programme.

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