HOT STUFF!
In 1991 America turned a culinary corner—that’s the first year we spent more money on salsa than on ketchup. If you love “hot” food, this chapter is for you

BLAME IT ON COLUMBUS
When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, he thought he’d landed in India. So he called the people he met there “Indians.”

That wasn’t the only mistake he made: When his hosts served a spicy food containing hot chiles, he assumed the chiles were related to piper nigrum, the plant that produces black pepper.

They’re actually part of the Solariaceae, or nightshade, family and are more closely related to potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants. But chiles have been known as chile “peppers” ever since.

MADE IN BOLIVIA
All varieties of chile peppers descended from prehistoric wild chile plants that originated somewhere near present-day Bolivia. Scientists believe that most animals avoided the painfully hot plants, but birds ate them—apparently because they can’t taste chiles—and spread the seeds all over Central and South America. Humans began eating the wild peppers as early as 7000 B.C., and had domesticated them by 2500 B.C.

South American and Latin American peoples, including the Aztecs, revered the peppers. They were used for everything from treating upper-respiratory disorders to ritualistic morning beverages. Montezuma, the last Aztec emperor, drank a concoction of chocolate and hot chiles for breakfast. The Incas took their reverence a step further: Agar-Uchu, or “Brother Chile Pepper” in English, is one of the four brothers of the Incan creation myth.

Chiles remained exclusive to the New World until Columbus brought some to Europe. From there they spread via trade routes to every remaining corner of the globe, and within a century they were firmly established in the cuisines of India, China, and Africa. Today an estimated 75% of the world’s population eats chiles on a daily basis. Mexico tops the list—Mexicans consume, on average, one chile per person, every day.

CHILE SCIENCE

What Makes Them Hot?

• All chiles contain a powerful alkaloid called capsaicin (cap-SAY-a-sin), which gives chiles their heat—and which isn’t found in any other plants. It’s so potent that humans can detect it even when it’s diluted to one part per million.
  
• The “capsaicinoids,” as they’re also known, are produced in the plant by the placenta —the part just below the stem of the chile. That’s also where the seeds and the “ribs” grow. On average, these parts are 16 times hotter than the rest of the plant, so it stands to reason that one way to cool down a chile (if that’s what you want) is to remove the placenta.
  
• 1-low hot is capsaicin? It’s so strong that it’s the main ingredient in a product designed to drive grizzly bears away. It’s also the “pepper” in pepper spray, which has replaced tear gas spray in more than 1,200 police departments around the U.S. according to Smithsonian magazine, when sprayed in the face, “it causes eyes to slam shut and creates a spasm in the respiratory system—an unpleasant experience that lasts 30 to 45 minutes.”

What Makes Them So Good?

• When you eat chiles, capsaicin irritates the pain receptor cells in your mouth.
  
• Some scientists believe the receptors then release 5ornething known as “substance P,” which rushes to “alert” the brain to the pain. In response~ the brain produces chemicals called endorphins that kill the pain and elicit feelings of well-being. Does hot, spicy food taste less hot to you after a couple of bites? Chile enthusiasts say this is the endorphins at work.
  
• In fact, some experts theorize that it’s the addictive nature of endorphins—not the taste of the chiles themselves, that makes the spice so popular.

Cooling Down

• Do you reach for ice water when you eat a hot pepper? It’s not a great idea—it not only won’t cool your mouth down, it will probably make things worse by spreading the capsaicin around. Beer might work (experts aren’t sure), but the best way to put out the fire is to drink cold milk…or eat any dairy product (e.g., frozen yogurt) with lactic acid. They contain casein, which acts like a detergent to help wash away the capsaicin. Other recommended foods: sugar, salt, tortillas, brandy Alexander, hunks of bread, and corn.

THE SCOVILLE SCALE
In 1912 Wilbur Scoville, a pharmacologist with the Parke Davis pharmaceutical company, needed to test the potency of some chiles he was mixing into a muscle salve. He mixed pure ground chiles into sugar-water and had a panel of tasters drink the water, in increasingly diluted concentrations, until the liquid was so diluted that it no longer burned their mouths.
Next, Scoville assigned a number to each chile based on how much it needed to be diluted before the tasters tasted no heat. The “Scoville scale,” as it’s still known, measures potency in multiples of 100. Here’s how some popular chiles are ranked:

Today the potency of chiles is measured very precisely by machines that calculate the exact amount of capsaicin in each chile. But the scale that is used is still named the Scoville scale in Wilbur Scoville’s honor.

HEALTH NOTES
Can eating chiles make you sick? Epidemiologists from Yale University and the Mexico National Institute of Public Health concluded that chile peppers may cause stomach cancer. However, peppers also contain quercetin, a chemical shown to reduce cancer risk in lab animals, so who knows?

Other maladies to watch out for if you’re a hardcore chile eater:

• Salsa sniffles. “Sweating and rhinitis (runny nose) caused by eating hot peppers.”
  
• Hunan hand. “The skin irritation that comes from chopping chiles.”
  
• Jaloprocitis. “The burn jalapeflos leave as they exit the body.”

On the other hand, according to a book called The Healing Powers of Chili:

• A 1986 experiment at Oxford University in England found that eating chiles may assist in burning calories.
  
• The popular muscle salve Heet is made mostly of capsaicin.
  
• Chilies are low in fat, high in fiber, and loaded with beta carotene and vitamin C. One half cup of chopped chile peppers offers more than twice the vitamin C of an orange.
  
• Capsaicin is a natural antibiotic, slowing down bacteria’s growth.
  
• A few more ailments that have been treated with capsaicin: indigestion, acne, alcoholism, arthritis, bronchitis, cramps, hemorrhoids, herpes, low blood pressure, shingles, wounds.

MORE CHILE FACTS

• Chilli is the Nahuatl, or Aztec, word for the plant.
  
• According to most accounts, chile peppers were introduced into what is now the United States by Cap itan General Juan de Oñante, who also founded Santa Fe in 1598.