Who will take the heat?

A hot summer afternoon our stomach cramps brought me and Ani in front of our favorite taco truck. Ani placed her order of tacos with the non-English speaking cook in her perfect Spanish mother tongue. Me on the other end, in an attempt to show off what my expensively paid Spanish classes earned me, I cried "lo mismo!" (the same). One bite latter and I wished I paid more attention to those classes, as "lo mismo" created a fiery explosion in my mouth, with an extreme heat running my esophagus, a runny nose and watery eyes.

"Don't you think our tacos are a bit spicier today?" was the only question I managed to ask.


"Borrachita, didn't you hear me ordering an extra serving of habanero topping?" Ani replied.

Habanero chilies

Had I heard of a that little devil called habanero chili? Yes. Had I ever dared to try it? Too much of a chicken to do that! In 2000 the Guinness Book of World Records named the habanero chili as the hottest chili in the world, giving out 100,000 to 350,000 units of heat. In order to understand its heat level, compare it to other peppers, like the bell pepper that has zero amount of heat, or the jalapeño pepper that has less than 8,000 heat units and the tabasco that has around 40,000 heat units. Although over the years other chilies have taken its leading place, the habanero remains one of the hottest peppers in the world.

The degree of heat in a chili pepper depends on the amount of a capsaicine it contains. Capsaicine is a molecule with a rather complicated structure, which customarily attaches to the heat receptors of the nervous system. As a result, it tricks the brain into receiving heat and pain messages. In response, the brain reacts to alleviate pain by de-sensitizing pain receptors and drop the body temperature by producing excessive sweat, and thus provide an instant "cold shower". This explains two bizarre everyday acts. One, although capsaicine containing medical products create an intense burning sensation when applied on the skin, they still alleviate muscle pain. Two, in hot climates, people's diet contain more spicy food than the cold climate diets.

Besides pain relief, hot peppers have other tremendous health benefits as well. Many diets suggest spicing up your meals, as chilies help losing weight. Just consider how many calories the body has to burn in order to produce the heat induced by capsaicine. In addition, it can boost the immune

system, making your body stronger to disease fighting, especially the cold and flu. Finally, studies have found that chilies prevent serious illnesses, like prostate cancer and certain types of diabetes, from manifesting.

Capsaicine also creates euphoria, making the risk of pain and discomfort rather worth-taking. But despite the merry results of consuming chili peppers, the question that rises around the table has always been how to deal with the heat. One can always jump around in an erratic dance, like I do, but this solution comes with compromising your dignity, not to mention rising serious eyebrows considering your mental state. Using food science to attack capsaicine heat appears to be a much safer solution.

In order to understand the science, just consider a taco, a rather spicy one. Think...how do you eat a spicy taco? You add a splash of lime, a spoonful of sour cream and eat it with a generous serving of rice. You enjoy it with soda or, preferably, a cold margarita and of course you do not omit the dessert!

Food science only confirms what practical culinary wisdom knew all along. Capsaicine is contained in the essential oils of chili peppers, thus it cannot be washed off with water. On the contrary, practice has indicated that drinking water only aggravates the burning sensation of chilies. As capsaicine is on the basic side of chemical compounds, the acidity of lime, or any other citric relatives, can counteract the burning sensation of chili peppers. Carbonated drinks and alcohol also help soothing the intensity of capsaicine. As a matter of fact, practical experiments showed that tequila and vodka are the most effective drinks, due to their high content of alcohol. Beer on the other hand, might not be as effective, as it has higher content of water, rather than alcohol. Furthrmore, sugar and honey, contained in the desert, have the marvelous ability to soak the capsaicine off the taste buds, cleansing thus the mouth.

However, there are two types of food that are considered the most potent weapons in the battle against the fiery chili peppers: dairy products and white rice. Sour cream in particular, combines three elementary traits: it is cold, thus it offers an instant cooling of the mouth, it has high content of fat that can saturate capsaicine, and it contains casein, a chemical substance that can attack capsaicine right on. Personally, I love a generous serving of sour cream with my food, spicy or not, as it has been the

closest substitute to strained Greek yoghurt I can find in the American market. My friend Derek always shared his sour cream with me in Mexican restaurants we were dining, as he found peculiar, yet interesting, the way I was eating it with a spoon.

Furthermore, white rice and its high content of starch can act like a sponge and wipe out the mouth of any capsaicine molecules. Other starch containing products, like bread and corn, might be helpful, but white rice has been found to be the most successful. In the majority of world cuisines, especially the ones using chili peppers and other spices, food is served on a bed or with a side of rice, and for a good reason, as this particular grain provides the perfect balance in the consumption of spicy food. In practice, if rice is not on the menu and your mouth is on fire, eat a piece of bread, which might not be as effective, but it contains enough starch to soothe your taste buds.

Just remember that chili heat is an acquired taste and tolerance to it can be built. Spicing up your food makes it more interesting and provides many health benefits. So, at the question "who will take the heat" stand up and say "I will"!