About 5 years ago, it was reported that a chili from the East Indies—the Bhut Jolokia, or "ghost chili"—was, by far, the world's hottest chili, twice as hot as the red Habanero chili, which had previously held the Guinness World Record for spiciness.
This report aroused the interest of Paul Bosland, who was then the director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University. In 2005, his laboratory confirmed that the Bhut Jolokia was indeed the hottest chili ever recorded.
Chilies are nutritious and prevent disease
As early as 1900, chemist Wilbur Scoville invented a method to measure the amount of capsaicin in chili peppers, and the standard unit for measuring spiciness is the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU). Sweet peppers contain no capsaicin, so their SHU is 0; jalapeños have an SHU of 5,000; while Habanero peppers have an SHU of 300,000. However, these chilies pale in comparison to the Bhut Jolokia, whose capsaicin content exceeds 1 million SHU.
For most people, the spiciness of chili peppers is just something their taste buds can feel, but in fact, spiciness is also linked to nutrition. Chili peppers are rich in vitamin C, beta-carotene, folic acid, magnesium, and potassium; the capsaicin in chili peppers also has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, which helps reduce the risk of heart disease, certain tumors, and other chronic diseases that come with age; several human trials have found that meals containing chili peppers can increase the body's energy expenditure and aid in weight loss; an article published in the British Journal of Nutrition last year also pointed out that regularly eating chili peppers can effectively slow the development of atherosclerosis and the oxidation of lipoproteins in the blood. Furthermore, people used to think that eating chili peppers frequently might irritate the stomach and even cause stomach ulcers. But the reality is quite the opposite. Capsaicin not only does not increase stomach acid secretion, but it also inhibits it and stimulates the secretion of alkaline mucus, which helps prevent and treat stomach ulcers. Milk can relieve the spiciness
When you eat chili peppers, you feel hot and naturally want to drink water or eat some staple food to dilute the spiciness. In fact, doing so is not very effective. In reality, capsaicin binds tightly to nerve receptors on the taste organs, and capsaicin is a fat-soluble substance; it can only bind with fats, oils, and alcohol. This explains why beer is more effective than water at diluting the spiciness.
But the best food to relieve the spiciness is milk, especially skim milk. Although it was previously thought that the fats in milk could better bind with capsaicin, current research has found that the truly effective component is casein in milk. Other spicy foods are also beneficial to the body
In addition to chili peppers, other foods like pepper, ginger, garlic, and mustard are also spicy, but their active ingredients are different from those in chili peppers.
The pungent substance in ginger, gingerol, can promote blood circulation, give the face a healthy glow, and also stimulate the appetite; the pungent substance in garlic, allicin, has multiple benefits such as lowering blood pressure, blood lipids, and blood sugar, as well as anti-cancer effects; and the commonly eaten onion contains its pungent volatile substance, diallyl disulfide, which has disinfectant and antibacterial properties. By eating these foods and chili peppers alternately, one can obtain "comprehensive" benefits.