Why do some humans love chili peppers? | Hacker News Reader

Why do some humans love chili peppers?

sapiens.org

112 pointsPetiver175 comments

These two papers give a much better answer than this blog: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138904172... (why do humans increase their chili consumption) and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8042654/ (antibacterial + disease-alleviating properties of capsaicin).

Besides the fact that capsaicin has antibacterial effects and exerts indirect disease-alleviating effects during bacterial infections (something our ancestors had to deal with a lot), eating chili triggers an endorphin high, but regularly eating chili makes you less sensitive and hence you have to eat more chili to get your little high. Taken together, these two properties of chili most likely have been the main drivers of it being adopted as a staple food in many cultures.

I’ve gotten to a point where I prefer to drink a hot spicy soup in a cup over many things. If I drink coffee, it also always burning hot with a solid mix of cream, sugar and cinnamon. One of the things it helps me achieve is a small warmth that also helps me sleep.

I don’t even resort to hot sauce for the broths anymore, just cutting up one or two small chili peppers makes the soup hotter.

The soups are becoming a really good diet trick because they have little to no calories (but have insane amounts of sodium).

Some chicken bullion, ginger/lemon grass (paste or the real deal), chili peppers, black pepper and salt has truly started becoming my morning coffee.

Drinking regularly drinks that are too hot significantly increases the risk of throat cancer. I can't find the paper anymore that I read few years ago, but they did check various cultures where drinking very hot tea is traditional, controlled for other factors and the results were not nice. IIRC the threshold where risk became significantly higher was around 70-75 degrees celzius.

I mean think about it - around 60 degrees C proteins are getting hammered in all cells. Doing frequent small burns in cells lining your throat damages them (also teeth), make it a habit and bad things will eventually happen. There wasn't enough time to develop protection when we moved from hunters and gatherers.

That your specific brain interprets this as somehow pleasant isn't telling much, some people get off on extremely painful experiences that nobody normal considers a good idea.

Biochemist who went to med school: very hot beverages will indeed cause tissue damage, and can cause oral cancer.

Though English uses the same word to describe both (“hot”), there is no relationship between “spicy” food and high temperature stuff, apart from the fact that they both stimulate pain receptors (but in very different ways, one being harmful and the other being harmless).

The commentor above appeared to use the term in both ways, referring to both "hot spicy soup" and "burning hot coffee"

Yeah, and that struck me as really wrong.

Why does tissue damage increase the risk of cancer? My guess is that more damage -> more cells created to replace damaged ones -> more opportunities for mutation. Is that right? If you bite the inside of your lip a lot, is that bad? Uh, asking for a friend.

When you have damaged tissue you must replace it sooner. Tissue replacement is by division of cells, which carries the risk of a transcription error. If the wrong error occurs and is not caught you have cancer.

Basically this, but perhaps a slightly more accurate explanation is that tissue damage causes inflammation, which is angiogenic, proliferative (which you hint at) and generally increases the risk of cancer.

> If you bite the inside of your lip a lot, is that bad?

Yeah, um, gonna want an answer to that too.

This:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morsicatio_buccarum

Makes no mention of cancer risk even in fairly extreme cases of cheek-biting.

The "Oral Cancer" article also doesn't list it as a risk factor or cause.

So... probably not that bad?

Yes, constantly biting your lip (I’m talking about injuring the tissue, not just nibbling) will increase your risk of oral cancer too.

It’s not something most people do super often, so I’m not sure if we’d even have a risk measurement for that. In almost all cases of accidental biting risk is basically nil / negligible… But theoretically nonzero.

A reference (somewhat taken at random) for more explanations of the general concept: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803035/

It’s a well-established principle, and is one of the main reasons why smoking anything in general will cause lung cancer, why hepatitis frequently leads to liver cancer, why IBD frequently leads to bowel cancer, why alcohol consumption causes oral cancer, etc.

When you say harmful are you suggesting the pain receptors themselves are damaged by "spicy" substances? Is that why we develop increased tolerance? Though many people don't seem to, even after 40 or 50 years or eating spicy foods on an at least weekly basis.

Pain receptors that are activated by burning are indicating something harmful is occurring to your body not because the receptor is actually activated, but because of the cellular damage that triggers the receptor.

On the other hand, capsaicin doesn't activate pain receptors by cellular damage. It activates pain receptors by allowing a flood of (Na+? Ca2+?) ions through cellular walls. This triggers the pain receptors to fire without the cell damage. That is a laymen's description of reference [1].

It's interesting because the biochemistry of spicy foods differs by the 'spicy' compound. Capsaicin isn't the only one at play, wasabi and horseradish-containing foods have an entirely different molecule responsible for producing the spicy sensation, allyl isothiocyanate.[2] If you're a fan of spicy peppers and horseradish, you have definitely noticed the difference in how the 'heat' manifests: capsaicin-containing foods cause areas of damaged skin or mucus membranes to feel painful, usually localized in the mouth or around nail beds of those preparing the peppers.

Horseradish on the other hand, with it's spicy-ness provided by allyl isothiocyanate, produces a heat that - for me - is more located in the back of the head or in the upper sinus cavities. A completely different sensation than that of capsaicin.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the biochemical method of action is to produce those feelings. I'm sure it is buried deep in the literature, but it isn't on the wiki.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin#Mechanism_of_action

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allyl_isothiocyanate

No, I said nothing of the sort. High temperatures are harmful, capsaicin is not.

Sure, it read a little ambiguously to me sorry.

All my snacks now are some sort of crispy vegetable with very hot chili powder, a little bit of salt and lemon juice.

Chop up some cucumbers/radish/Lima beans/tomatoes/carrots/chickpeas etc. add a chili powder, lemon and salt and I’m good to go. Ready in seconds and way better than eating potato chips and gives me a little bit of an endorphin rush.

I'd love to see someone peel and chop enough carrots for a worthwhile snack in seconds! How do you chop chickpeas?

Oh come one, I obviously don’t chop the lima beans or chickpeas. I don’t peel carrots, wash and then chop in under 20 seconds per carrot literally. If I want to make them really fine I use a peeler to thinly slice them into discs (I’ve gotten very good at this, can probably do a carrot in a minute. I don’t have a mandolin slicer).

Actually with a mandolin and skipping peeling you literally could do a carrot in 4 or 5 seconds, but the slices tend to be so thin you'd have trouble eating them as finger food. Anyway I'm keen to try your suggestion.

Also in the same vein if you want to try things out. Take eggplant/squash/beans/spinach etc., chop them up into cubes, slice some onions and some garlic, add a half teaspoon of black mustard, a pinch of whole cumin, some asafetida, salt, whole dried red chili peppers, about a table spoon of fresh grated coconut (you get frozen packs of pre grated coconut), and some tamarind or lemon juice in a pot. Cover, let it simmer or medium high for 10 mins and there’s another health snack to go. The whole thing takes me 15 mins to make and I can snack throughout the day.

Yeah I really need to get one.

I have a cup of Bovril with a bit of pepper and some Tabasco every morning. Pretty good stuff.

I have a tendency to put sriracha in everything

Living in Japan, it’s very hard to find properly spicy food or nice chilli sauces. I’ve resorted to just eating plain cut chilli. A while back, I experimented with not adding more spices than was already provided in my meals. No pepper, no chilli. After about a month, I started experiencing new tastes and flavours from foods I’ve always ate. It was amazing.

But I craved that endorphin high from spicy foods and have fallen back to my old ways.

One of the hottest things I've ever eaten was at a Korean-run Japanese curry house in NYC.

IIRC you chose spiciness on a 1-5 scale. The first time I tried a 2 and it was damn spicy. Next time I tried a 3 and it ruined my lunch, my pride, my afternoon, and my evening.

There are plenty of curry places in Japan that do spice levels too.

However normal Japanese curry tends to be pretty mild as well as other food in Japan, including Japanese style Chinese places which often serve dishes like mapo tofu with no spiciness whatsoever.

There are Japanese curry places in SoCal that charge extra (~25-50c per level IIRC) per spice level. Since I couldn’t handle any more than 2/10 I found that a win-win :)

> eating chili triggers an endorphin high, but regularly eating chili makes you less sensitive and hence you have to eat more chili to get your little high

I wonder what is the evolutionary reason for that. The older you are, the more defense you needed against bacteria?

Biological systems seeks homeostasis on a very deep level. A lot of our brain is devoted to normalizing volume and brightness, for example.

The reason chili enthusiasts need more over time is basically the same as the reason heroin enthusiasts do.

But our sensitivity to temperature doesn't decrease with age, if anything the opposite... even if that's more obvious with ambient rather than tactile temperature (which I'd imagine are processed quite differently by our nervous systems).

Taste sensitivity declines with age. Strong flavours like smelly cheese are disgusting for kids but enjoyed by older adults.

They are enjoyed by adults who acquired that taste: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_taste

For instance, it would be really hard to find anyone, no matter how old, who enjoys surströmming or hákarl without having become acquitted with them.

Acquainted :) Though perhaps they are used as part of the Swedish justice system?

I always thought that the endorphin high is unrelated to the beneficial effect: any strong pain is normally followed by a release of endorphins to compensate. It's why pain and pleasure are often difficult to disentangle. A strong dose of capsaicin will induce a painful sensation in the mouth (you'll feel like burning), which is compensated by a release of endorphins.

The desensitization to hot peppers happens at a much smaller scale than years, so it doesn’t have much to do with your age.

Problem with this is that outside of the Americas no one was eating caspicum until about 500 years ago.

I thought only Aussies (and Kiwis) called them that... though apparently the term is used in India and Singapore too. (Yes I know it's the correct botanical term for the plant, but we use it for the food too).

I didn't know this was a thing until I met my partner, who has it (and so does her mother), but there is a couple conditions called fissured tongue and geographic tongue ( ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fissured_tongue ) which effectively means that her tongue is a lot more sensitive to salt/pepper/spicy than average. To the point where black/white pepper alone might give the same intensity chilli gives to a "normal" person. There are many reasons for the variance.

I dunno, i have fissured tongue (10-20% more visually dramatic than the Wikipedia headline photo) and i have the far and away the highest tolerance (for garlic/pepper/chile) of any of my family.

Might just be a coincidence with your partner.

I have a highly fissured tongue but still enjoy spicy foods. I think I'm a bit more sensitive to salt than most though. Go figure.

I have geographic tongue but thankfully it's not affected by spices. However, I can only use "regular" flavor toothpaste and "cinnamon" gum will send me to a world of pain and anguish. I wonder if and why different irritants affect different people differently.

> The prevalence of the condition increases significantly with age, occurring in 40% of the population after the age of 40.

Yikes! I love chilis and peppers. Couldnt imagine having this condition although my wife and kids may appreciate less spicy food.

A dental hygienist pointed out to me that I had geographic tongue when I was about 26 or so. I've been eating hot chilies since I was a child. Although, as I've gotten older I have noticed that eating too much at once will upset my stomach.

Yup, seeds out, and optimally the soft white interior membranes too.

Holy trypophobia

I mean, I get it, like I can't imagine being new to the scene and starting with "Unlimited Love" or something as your first listen, but of course - if you were there for the "Mothers Milk" era, it's obvious why you'd like the peppers.

Chilli peppers don't like waterlogged roots; they prefer higher ground. I'm told.

Haa, before I clicked I was thinking of saying something similar. New single is hot.

Reminded me of the old internet joke:

https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Nov/chili.html

Well, chili is not chilling at all for some people.

The article briefly mentions Paul Rozin, but his "benign masochism" framework is actually a more general theoretical explanation for why people like (apparent) negative experiences. It's quite interesting [0].

I'm trying to find an older paper by him where he goes into peppers more specifically. One thing I remember from it is that he notes that our enjoyment of spicy food is localised. I like the burning sensation of peppers in my mouth, not elsewhere on my body.

[0] https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

Capsicum patches are popular with athletes, a partner of mine would put them on her lower back when ballet would get strenuous.

We would sometimes forget about that before sex, and the capsicum would migrate. Neither of us enjoyed that much.

So we can rule the other mucous membranes out, for (almost!) everyone, but it can be pleasant over sore muscles.

shouldn't it be most humans? China and India and most of asia have chilli peppers and so does africa. It is the minority that cannot tolerate chillies.

prior to chillies, black pepper, ginger and garlic was used and if used in appropriate quantities gives you a similar result. chillies are just a lot more economical to grow.

I live in the Indian subcontinent. As long as I can remember, I have HIGHLY DISLIKED eating spicy food to a point when my sibling and I were kids, there used to be 2 dishes for lunch/dinner, one for the adults and one for kids. This is VERY unusual in our culture because kids are, out of this "practice of cooking 2 dishes" that parents train their kids to "eat chilli" from when they are very young. They are "trained" from a young age.

I probably had that done to me and they realized, "ah shucks. Let it be" and here I am today.

I take milk with my dinner when the food is spicy because that has always helped me.

The problem is, I am often ridiculed for not ensuring the spice of red chilli.

The day before, my parents "challenged" me to eat dinner without chilli for a month because according to them, "our body wants chilli". Mine doesn't.

edit: just to clarify, our spice cabinet in our home is an absolute monster, we have dozens of common and exotic spices which we use "on a daily basis" so even highly spicy food isn't the problem for me. "red chilli" in particular is troubling.

Maybe you have an allergy? For all of my life, I absolutely hated shrimp. Even smelling it from across a room would make me want to vomit. Then when I was in my mid-20's, I developed an allergy to crabs (which previously I loved) and I realized that reaction was the same I'd had to shrimp all those years.

uh, not "allergy" levels. i dont get anything troubling.

i mean when i have food with lots of red chilli, i feel like i "dont want to stand the burning sensation". most people have a higher tolerance than me but i would prefer if it werent testing my tolerance.

its not like i cant or wont eat food with boatloads of red chilli....

i have a relative who takes red chilli powder, mixes some water and takes that with plain rice. that's "comfort food" for him, not for me...

pick a chilli from a plant and eat it like how an animal would do in the wild. you'll want to jump into a pond after that. The chilli plant evolved in such a way that humans don't like chilli pepper. Humans used cooking and drying and diluting and other modern methods to reduce the ill-effects of spices and enjoy its flavors in small quantities.

I occasionally have them raw in salads, though more often pickled (still technically raw I suppose). Chopped up and cooked in something too of course. I don't think that's unusual of me.

But would you eat chilli peppers like how you'd eat other fruits and veggies? Say tomatoes or beets. No. ofcourse not.

I eat raw but pickled chillies far more frequently than raw tomatoes. (I never eat raw beetroot so I'll leave that, though I'm surprised people do. Or are 'beets' not beetroot?)

I eat raw and not even pickled chillies in salads or on the side of a plate of other food at least as much as tomatoes the same way.

More often pickled, but that's largely for convenience, in no small part for extra vinegary flavour, and not really at all to make them more mild.

But I already said that above and you clearly don't believe me. I don't think it's uncommon either, fwiw, I'm not at all claiming to be unique or anything like it.

Yeah some people do, in asian cultures it's not uncommon. Actually they eat it more like an apple than a beet.

It was my grandma favorite snack. The hotter the better.

Conditioning is very powerful.

I don't know what you mean. Raw chillis are commonly served in this area (Eastern Europe) together with soups, just like raw onions, for example.

However, I've never seen anyone eat a raw beetroot. And of course, people don't put tomatoes in fruit salads, as the old saying goes - different fruit are eaten in different ways.

Raw beetroot is actually a great salad vegetable. We have it grated sometimes. Some can be a little earthy and have a bit of heat like radish or ginger.

Had raw grated beetroot in my salad today for lunch, and very tasty it was too. I pulled it out of the ground five weeks ago, weighed 1.4kg - it's the purple-and-white stripey version, makes the salad quite colourful. Been cutting bits off it to grate every time I have a salad. For some reason, beetroot seems to keep extremely well in the fridge.

Best to do when fresh. Most when store bought are a few months old they are a lot tougher and harder to digest.

Oh, I started when it was fresh. It takes a while to munch through a 1.4kg root. And it actually seems to be remarkably unaffected by time, so far. Probably only a couple more salads left in it now.

When I was a kid we use to eat them by plucking them from a tree, dipping them in salt, and then devouring them. It was just something people did.

Well you don't eat potatoes raw do you? Nor do you eat an eggplant raw and many others. I don't understand the argument here

Raw potatoes are risky because of toxins that can be present.

Eggplant and potato are aren’t fruits. Chiles are fruits, and most edible fruits are eaten raw.

Eggplants are fruits, in biology definition

Yes I do, and most Koreans do too.

We dip raw peppers into a hot pepper sauce. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-bwUP77ElM

> But would you eat chilli peppers like how you'd eat other fruits and veggies? Say tomatoes or beets. No. ofcourse not.

Yes, of course I do. What point do you think you're making?

There's a huge range of "chili peppers", and the cultures where these are popular all refer to them by their individual names. see https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/chili-pepper-types/

It's not just varying levels of hot-ness that distinguishes them but a wide variety of flavor profiles and preparation techniques that enhance those flavors. Some peppers can absolutely be eaten raw and with seeds, others do well with drying and roasting prior to use, others are hot no matter how you prepare them and even if you remove the seeds.

I think the actual heat that folks react to is mostly just an acquired taste and NOT something that's been programmed in by evolution to keep humans from eating these things. You can get used to rather hot peppers, but even if you don't there's many which have a low-enough scoville number (in the 10000's), that the heat is controllable by using less and one can still enjoy the other aspects of pepper's flavor.

>The seeds of Capsicum plants are dispersed predominantly by birds. In birds, the TRPV1 channel does not respond to capsaicin or related chemicals (avian vs. mammalian TRPV1 show functional diversity and selective sensitivity). This is advantageous to the plant, as chili pepper seeds consumed by birds pass through the digestive tract and can germinate later, whereas mammals have molar teeth which destroy such seeds and prevent them from germinating. Thus, natural selection may have led to increasing capsaicin production because it makes the plant less likely to be eaten by animals that do not help it disperse.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin

Raw jalepenos are not uncommon, I've eaten them often, including served that way in restaurants. Red chillis sometimes too, though not as much.

If you let your jalapeños get red, they'll be hotter and tastier.

It's common in Asia to be served raw hot chillis as a garnish for whatever you've ordered. I've had probably at least a couple hundred of such meals in Singapore.

It's just harvest season for my chili's and I eat all of them fresh.

Also the majority of chili plants aren't actually that spicy.

> The chilli plant evolved in such a way that humans don't like chilli pepper.

The hottest chilli cultivars were deliberately bread because humans like them.

Yes, but it's worth keeping in mind that everything that we call a chilli was selectively bred, and is quite different from the wild rootstock. Chiltepins [1], which is thought to be quite close to the wild variant, is much hotter than most commercial chillis today, although not up there with the hottest.

[1] https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/chiltepines -- recommended, always have some in my pantry.

what? people eat and garnish food with raw chilis all the time.

If anything, processes like pickling can bring even more heat out of a pepper

What's interesting is that even among cultures that eat very spicy food, some absolutely cannot tolerate it. I have a friend from Chengdu and some friends in Malaysia who cannot eat anything spicy. It makes it hard for them to eat food outside and they've had to learn by trial and error the restaurants that can actually limit the amount of spiciness.

I've found that my tolerance for spicy depends entirely on the spice. Chili peppers? Intolerable to me. Even "mild" dishes are too uncomfortable, and anything spicier is impossible for me to eat.

On the other hand, horseradish or wasabi is no problem even in high concentrations. Black pepper is no problem as well.

It seems to me that there must be a biochemical reason for the differences.

Sichuan pepper too; widely used across east Asia for a long time.

? It was imported from the new world around 1700 so 300 years.. not really a long time, just as new as the us.

Sichuan peppercorns, not chili peppers. Although I don't know why gp provided them as an example. They aren't the slightest bit hot, they just have a tingly numbing sensation and a nice flavor.

ginger, black pepper or long pepper could be a better example

Sichuan pepper is native to Asia and is a citrus species. it is an old world plant.

Sichuan Peppercorn is not a new world chili, and is endemic to Asia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanthoxylum_armatum

Why do people refer to it as new / old world when it's been around and inhabited since forever? It's a weird misnomer, just like calling its inhabitants Indians, and just like calling countries 3rd world.

Its pretty universal though, all people have preconceptions like that. Like chinese tourists, calling home the mainland and the inhabitants of the visited country "foreigners". Its more prevalent in huge countries or ex empires though. Super annoying when your country is small and you have to adapt to these wrong pre conceptions because the other side gets insulted, if you call them "just another country among many".

Can't tolerate? The world champions in chili eating contests are caucasian.

That might be because the competition is held in the US? I don’t know.

I think that's less tolerance for spices and more just white guys being into weird frat house style competitions. I mean can you imagine a black Jackass

world star

I thought the author would revisit the 90s discovery of "supertasters," people who have a heightened sense of taste. (People who like hot peppers usually have a diminished taste sensitivity and are not supertasters.) https://apnews.com/article/ee0a2d08c57a937913c86f53541d0e80 https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/accounting-for-taste/

Not convinced about that - first, spiciness is not a taste, because it affects the heat/pain receptors on your tongue rather than the taste buds. Of course, the sensitivity for spiciness varies a lot between individuals, and maybe it correlates with the sensitivity for taste. Second, it might be the other way around: people with diminished taste sensitivity appreciate spicy food because it adds some variety for them, but that doesn't mean people with normal or even heightened taste sensitivity can't appreciate spicy food.

I have a deviated septum and allergies. My nose gets plugged up pretty quickly.

Peppers make it much easier to keep things clear up there. It gets to the point where I start to crave peppers.

I rarely eat a meal without some kind of hot sauce. I've been leaning more towards Sriracha until this year's shortage, then reverted to Tabasco.

Try making your own sauces! Fry some chillies with a lot of oil and add some salt - that's it. In a glass that lasts forever. You can add other spices or e.g. peanuts or small tofu pieces for more flavour and texture. Works with fresh chillies but also with dried ones, which makes it super cheap - you'll get a kg bag at your local Indian/chinese shop for next to nothing. ou can vary it with different ingredients, powder vs chopped vs whole chillies, remove the seeds for more fruity and less spicy flavour, ..

Store the result in a strong condiment/jam glass (you don't want it leaking..). Also makes a great gift.

Apparently some animals love it as well. I lived in New Mexico in the heart of green chili country for many years, and it was not uncommon then for deer to jump over, chew through, or break down fences to get to chili plants.

No explanation in article. Popular theories:

- capsaicin is anti microbial

- used as a cultural marker of toughness

Personally I like the taste but also the mild high I get.

Interesting genre of article. It's like usual content-free content-marketing but it must have taken some work at least.

Bland, doesn't answer question it purports to, fairly generic. But requires research. Wonder if AI generated.

> Personally I like the taste but also the mild high I get

I make a sweet curry that guests have called "the stealth chicken" because the heat grows slowly, and people don't realize it is actually pretty brutally spicy until they are into the second helping (BTW - I do warn people about it). It takes 15-20 minutes to cool off, and even people who don't like spicy end up downing a plate or three (if they like the flavor of curry). Usually dinners with this dish are a blast because everyone is laughing at everything, no matter how unfunny. I've always wondered if it was endorphin that was enhancing the experience.

Go on, what's the recipe? :D

Well, at least for me, it is simple: a controlled pain sensation, in low quantities, giving a sense of excitement (even thinking about it gives me a tingling sensation and makes my mouth full of saliva), in higher - followed by a flood of endorphins. It is essentially getting high on locally-produced painkillers.

From anecdata, chili-loving is strongly correlated with sensation seeking, or rather: the balance between pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance.

Do people really feel a flood of endorphins? Growing up in a culture full of chili, I've had to endure my fair share of extra spicy food and never enjoyed it. It leaves me with nothing but a nasty burn in my mouth and an inability to taste anything for some time.

Maybe that wonderful sensation combination of "oh this is too spicy" and "oh I need some more of that" is like the runners high that some people just don't get.

HEB Carolina Reaper Puffs were my last moment of the combination:

https://spicyfoodreviews.com/2020/12/spicy-snacks-h%E2%80%91...

> Do people really feel a flood of endorphins?

Yes.

This. A former co-worker loved chili. He also loved psychedelic mushrooms and other drugs, and he pondered if there was some kind of connection there, that perhaps it was the case that chili gave him a way to experience a similar kind of thrill in a safer, more controlled way.

Teach me, chile, and I shall Learn.
Take me, chile, and I shall Escape.
Focus my eyes, chile, and I shall See.
I feel no pain, for the chile is my teacher.
I feel no pain, for the chile takes me beyond myself.

I feel no pain, for the chile gives me sight.

It's not some intellectual matter to dissect. It's not that spicy food hurts less or tests better to me than to others but that I love the pain and the challenge and how far I can push my tolerance.

The "not minding the pain" aspect.

My limit is when it gets so spicy you spend the next 8-12 hours in pain like you drank acid. Find yourself a nice old thai place and make a special request "make me cry" and they will oblige.

All good things hurt at some point.

I've been growing chilis for 3 years and it's slowly become my hobby that gives me the most satisfaction. Most varieties (Especially Capsicum Chinense, the species that most superhots come from) calibrate very well to small spaces/resources. It's an incredibly satisfying hobby that gives an opportunity to get very technical with something without involving backlit screens, a wonderful social lubricant.

Summary: the linked text doesn't answer the headline question. It's more a literary excercise

Is there some secret trick to avoid trouble the day after?

For medium and somewhat hot peppers, the rule is pretty simple. Don't eat more than you are willing to chew. Mostly this is a problem of eating whole seeds or big chunks of pepper you aren't actually chewing up and digesting.

Once you go hot enough, this won't matter. But I guess it's part of the experience.

Or simply skip eating it, just cut one chilli and put it into your soup/curry.

Not connecting the eating with the subsequent suffering.

This is legitimately my tactic, and yet I still wonder why my dog attempts to eat things that cause him issues.

Maybe he has a better understanding of the risks and rewards than I gave him credit for.

I brand my fermented hot sauce as “Burns Twice” so everyone is aware ahead of time.

I remember seeing one called 'Arson Fire' which basically conveyed the same thing.

Eating yoghurt along with chilies helps a lot to avoid problems the next day.

One man’s problem is another man’s opportunity.

Dairy. Milk contains a protein called casein, which breaks down capsaicin.

can confirm. i cannot eat spicy food, but when i have to i always ask for a big glass of milk.

Loo roll in the fridge.

if you eat spicy food regularly it won't happen to you.

I know what meme you’re talking about but I’ve never had this issue. YMMV

Secret, no, but not eating it is always an option.

What trouble?

diarrhea and irritation of anus/emorrhoids

I've never encountered this problem in real life, only on online forums, so I don't have any firsthand experience.

Maybe if you just eat spicy food every day you'll eventually get used to it and not have that problem? I've eaten (what some may describe as) spicy food for probably more than 90% of the meals in my life and it doesn't bother me.

Maybe some people don't entirely digest/neutralize the capsaicin before it passes through the body. I've also never really had this issue except one time some years ago when I ate half a fresh raw carolina reaper as a dumb drunk thing, which I assume has loads more capsaicin in it than what I normally ingest from spicy food.

I don't think there is any real, verified, universal connection.

well, that's what happens to me, even with a small quantity, every single time. And I know it's the chili because it burns like the mouth did the previous day

I’ve always enjoyed the chili tasting interviews produced by Chili Klaus:

https://youtube.com/c/ChiliKlausDK/videos

There’s such a lovely range of human reactions to eating those little spicy-fruity peppers.

I really enjoy the Hot Ones series where celebrities are interviewed while eating extremely hot wings. It helps that the interviewer and his researchers actually take the interview side very seriously as well.

I like the taste of spicy food. But 8 hours later my guts are in misery. Any fixes? I asked my stomach/bowel doctor and he said he had the same problem. Knew of no solution.

> Peppers containing capsaicin—such as the Scotch bonnets used in Jamaican beef patties (shown here)—not only appeal to the tastebuds, they also can help preserve foods that otherwise might spoil.

Here it is, as expected.

I love spicy food, but the older that I get, the more my body (stomach/digestive system) does not agree with it. It's an unfortunate state of affairs.

The YouTube show Hot Ones opened me up to a whole new world of hot sauces that bring the heat along with great flavor.

Because a lot of meals a more bland than we like so we like to spice it up ?

Because they are "Red Hot"?

My question isn't "why do some humans love chili peppers"?

Spicy is tasty.

My question is "why do some people love ASSBLASTER 9000 NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST hot sauce"? You know, the kind that comes with a warning on it.

The difference is like sipping on a cocktail while the guy next to you chugs pure ethanol.

As a guy who loves assblaster sauce, it’s just so good.

Not entirely sure I can communicate why I love super spicy stuff, but I do love the flavor of most chilis, and the intensity of the experience borders on the euphoric when the fumes are causing nearby people to react like they’ve been tear gassed.

I guess it’s a delicious way to get high?

Unfortunately after all this time my colon has not gotten nearly as desensitized to the heat as the other side of my GI tract.

Out of curiosity, what's your experience of the effects? I tried a toothpick covered in that hot sauce that comes in a flashbang-like container, and the pain was serious. Not intolerable, but akin to a burn that would blister all over the inside of my mouth.

Do you feel less pain than that? Or is the pain just worth it?

So based on my experiences with friends and family, I do experience less pain and am less sensitive to spice than them. There will be things that I am genuinely unaware are spicy but friends and family are telling me it's hot, but I think there's also the aspect that when it starts to get really hot I just enjoy the intensity of the sensation and pain.

The super mild stuff, like tabasco, tapatio, sriracha, cholula etc, I can sense the spice but it's mostly just about the flavor. Like I can literally drink the stuff straight out of a glass and it's like chili flavored vinegar, with only a bit of heat as it hits my throat.

Straight jalapenos just taste kind of sweet and fruity to me, with just a hint of spice, but these are some of my favorite just on flavor alone.

Bird's eye chili, thai chilis be they fresh or dried or in vinegar, feel only a bit hotter than tabasco/jalapenos to me.

On my recent trip to Thailand I really wanted to find a place that would blow me away with heat. I would always ask for everything 10/10 thai spicy, and I got to the point where I was additionally just covering my noodles/curries with a 0.5 cm thick layer of whatever fresh/dried chili they'd have on hand, and then adding more throughout the meal, to the horror of the poor vendors/chefs. It just tastes great, really love the flavors of the chilis but it doesn't honestly taste that much spicier to me than tabasco or jalapenos (which is why I kept adding more to try to get it spicier).

Every time I eat at a restaurant that has a spice scale I always go for 5/5, 10/10, nuclear/danger/whatever, and 9.5/10 times I will be disappointed. I get the feeling that most restaurants just err on the safe side so that people don't return the food for being too spicy.

For some reason habaneros to me are a real jump up. Some really pure habanero purees can get pretty damn spicy. I still douse my food in it, but this is where I can really start sweating and breathing through my mouth. For whatever weird reason I still find it super enjoyable but definitely straddling the border of pain/pleasure.

I got a Hot Ones variety box including the Last Dab, and I was just using that as regular hot sauce for my pizza and burritos. Like a good 1-2 teaspoons per bite? Honestly for whatever reason less spicy than some of the habanero sauces I've had.

Have not tried straight ghost peppers/carolina reapers yet. For some reason they scare me, but I'd love to if I came across them.

Because they hurt so good.

Their songs are nice(?

Why do we need a study for something that obvious ?

The answer is simple...

They make good music.

Edit: forgot you are not supposed to joke on HN

It just has to be a good joke.

Humans don't like chilli pepper. It literally burns our mouth. We enjoy the burning feeling in small quantities.

I don't like pizza, it literally makes me fat. I enjoy the taste of pizza in large quantities.

The plant has evolved capsaicin as an animal deterrent as only birds can disperse chilli pepper seeds while animals digest the seeds. No other animal other than humans like chilli. Humans are an exception because we cook our food and cooking alters food chemistry in a such way that spices become desirable when mixed with meat or vegetables. You won't be able to eat even 50g of ripe red chillies freshly plucked from the chilli shrub.

You literally wrote:

> Humans don't like chilli pepper.

And now you write:

> No other animal other than humans like chilli.

Which one is it?

Also, there are different species, I've eaten lots of different chili, I've eaten whole raw Bhut Jolokias, that was not pleasant, I didn't like it, it hurt a lot and the taste was not nice either. Lots of milder species are lovely to eat raw, they have a mild burn which I do find enjoyable, and they have a fresh sweet flavor which tastes great.

I messed up my grammar English isn't my first language. I don't know how to phrase it properly. I'll edit the comment when I figure it out.

> Which one is it?

None. Both statements are false. Chili Pepper have a few pests as any other crop has. Pepper weevil for example.

"Humans don't like <thing> because they don't enjoy consuming it in some arbitrary quantity"? Really, that's your argument? I'm not capable of eating 1kg of bread, does that mean I don't like bread?

I "like" a thing when I get pleasure out of practicing/consuming it in some form.

> The plant has evolved capsaicin as an animal deterrent as only birds can disperse chilli pepper seeds while animals digest the seeds.

That's a common explanation but the article links to a study that supports another explanation, capsaicin having likely evolved for its antimicrobial properties instead:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0802691105

It is an interesting study but why would an anti-microbial agent act as an animal deterrent. A goat or a monkey would disperse the seeds if not for capsaicin. I feel that there was some evolutionary pressure for selecting against animals consuming the fruit or else only some animals would feel effects of capsaicin and others would not.

If mortality of seeds by fungus infection is more important than seed dispersal by mammals, then it makes sense to produce capsaicin. Since birds are likely better at dispersal than mammals (and don't have teeth) preventing mammals from eating chilli peppers might also be a beneficial side effect of the production of capsaicin, even if not the main reason for it.

Evolution just works on chance mutations and capsaicin is just what chilli peppers happened to start producing. Maybe if they happened to make penicillin instead they'd be better off, but they just do with what they have and that is capsaicin. They were just lucky that birds and humans tolerate capsaicin.

Is the distinction between 'liking a thing' and 'enjoying the feeling induced by a thing' important?

1)humans like and enjoy sugar.

2)humans don't like jumping of a cliff but enjoy the thrill of doing it.

spices are in the second category

I think the subset of humans that enjoy the thrill of jumping of cliffs would say, if asked 'what do you like to do in your spare time' in an interview or whatever, 'jumping off cliffs' (or whatever the sport name for it is).

It would take a pretty tedious person to say 'well I don't like jumping out of planes but I do enjoy the thrill of it, going HALO jumping next weekend if you ~want to join m~ might enjoy the thrill of joining me'.

What's the point in looking for loopholes in my analogy lol. It was just what came up in my mind first.

I'm not looking for loopholes, I think it's a fine analogy (because I would say 'I like chillies'!), I'm just trying to understand the distinction you're making, or rather what value/meaning it provides.

Sounds like semantics.

Well it certainly is - that doesn't have to be bad or wrong. I'm just not convinced there's a semantic difference here employed by anyone but GP.

I think this confusion is probably caused by English not being my first language.

I'm a human and I like chili peppers

you're no true scotshuman.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com