Moment of Science: Spice
If you can’t stand the heat... you’re probably Dan Smith eating slightly-spicy chips.
They say variety is the spice of life, and spice definitely runs the gamut for variety. This week, we’re turning up the heat, and testing the limits of enjoyable vs downright painful. Highlights:
* Spice isn’t really a taste, at least for how our taste buds perceive it. “Capsaicin” is the culprit for many spicy foods, and that ends up binding to what are called “VR1 receptors” inside our mouths. Those receptors are actually meant to detect heat as in temperature, to keep us from burning ourselves... so when capsaicin does its thing, we perceive those foods as being “hot”, even though it’s all an illusion.
* Back in 1912, Wilbur Scoville invented a scale to quantify how much capsaicin is concentrated in different types of peppers and chilis... you know where we’re going from here. Bell peppers have no capsaicin, so we can just put those at zero. Poblano, or ancho chilis when dried, run about 1000-2000 on the Scoville scale -- and if you think that’s a jump, just you wait. Jalapeno peppers average about 5000 SHU (Scoville Heat Units), and chipotle peppers are about double -- even though they’re just smoked and dried jalapenos.
* Cayenne and Tabasco -- the pepper, not the sauce -- are close to 50,000, and habaneros jump to almost 3x that... and here my nose is still running from the chips. Climbing the scale and adding some zeroes involves names like “Ghost Pepper” (Bhut Jolokia, 2007), “Naga Viper” (2011) and “Trinidad Scorpion” (2011)... and the current hottest chili pepper known to man is the “Carolina Reaper” (2017), at a stunning million and a half on the Scoville scale. While these technically don’t count toward peppers, pepper spray used by law enforcement is near 5 million SHU, and pure capsaicin is 16 million SHU.
* It’s important to note that the Scoville scale is reserved for individual peppers. The active ingredient in things like horseradish or wasabi -- which is mostly sold staeside as horseradish with food coloring -- is not capsaicin. It hits a bit harder, but in about the time you can start to pronounce “allyl isothiocyanate”, that kick is pretty much over.
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