“Died of high chili consumption”? Is this actual English? Those words don’t seem to fit together that way. I feel like if this were a real thing, Thailand wouldn’t exist.
How hot Thai food is, is somewhat overblown. It’s the hottest regularly served food in the world, but it’s not hotter than some people enjoy. Their “spicy” comes from red and green chili’s, ginger, peppercorn, and garlic. By far, the hottest of that group is the red chili’s, but those are around 200,000 scoville. I can eat those and not break a sweat.
The one chip challenge was a lot hotter than any Thai food. Hotter than any of the other challenge or worlds hottest “x” that I’ve tried (friends and stuff gift me these types of things a lot). I’ve bought a lot of sauces that are hotter than it, and it still didn’t have me wishing for something to drink. My mouth just doesn’t react to capsaicin as much as the average persons.
There was an arstechnica article on this topic TLDR:
The newer 🌶️ pack so much 🥵 that we discovered too much capsaicin can cause feel bad effects in the body.
Thailand wasn’t built with ghost peppers and above. We never had 14million scovilles per bite before.
Edit: found it https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/teens-death-after-eating-a-single-chip-highlights-risks-of-ultra-spicy-foods/
Capsaicin is a crystalline structure. Pure capsaicin is 16 million scoville units, and is a crystal. I highly doubt there’s any food that anyone is eating that is 14 million scoville units per bite. That would require 87.5% of the food to be crystalline.
It’s a powder flavoring applied on top of a chip.
People don’t eat huge chunks of salt any more than they are eating chunks of capsaicin.
If we can salt chips, we can probably capsaicinize them too.
Mexican food has nothing on Thai food when it comes to spice. I like spicy food, even Thai-spicy food, but I have only once made the mistake of asking them to make it as spicy as they could. I swear that little old lady was hiding a huge grin as she marched that order back to the kitchen. Then they only came out to refill my water once.
It was fucking delicious, but I think I started to hallucinate.
There is another country that would not exist if high Chile consumption was a real thing.
This is real title gore, the sentence structure barely makes sense too. Unwinding the journalistic word order and even correcting for the missing word “report” and the chilli misspelling, it basically says
Autopsy was conducted on a teen who had a tortilla, and it[s report] says: “He died of high chil[li] consumption and had a heart defect.”
The logic is technically correct but the following bizzare statements are suggested (not implied):
- If you are a teen and eat a tortilla, a doctor may decide you need an autopsy. Prevention first, amirite?
- The cause of death of the teen in question was high chilli consumption, which caused a heart defect, and subsequently the autopsy, either of which alone would be enough to kill him.
So bad it’s good. Personally, I like the description text on the video that makes it seem like the teen who was autopsied is speaking:
An autopsy of a Massachusetts teen who died after participating in a spicy tortilla chip challenge says he died from eating a lot of chile pepper extract, and 14-old Harris Wolobah had a congenital heart defect.
Editorially, it’s a hilarious article. Though, respect to journalists out there. This might be a situation of, “Johnson, I need that tortilla chip death article on my desk in 5 minutes”.
edit: Per the correction in the article, I guess AP style guidelines dictate ‘chile’ instead of ‘chili’. It looks super weird to me!
You mean like “died of multiple mosquite bites” doesn’t make sense because people live in countries with a lot of mosquitos?
I’m not sure what part of my post indicated I might be serious, but I wasn’t. I was just commenting on the title gore with a funny.
The words make perfect sense though, the premise is the more ridiculous part
It seems like a more accurate title would be “died of high capsaicin consumption due to a heart defect”.
That’s still misleading. He died of a heart defect exacerbated by high capsaicin consumption.
Any high stress event could have exacerbated the heart defect.
Wow. “Died of defect triggered by high capsaicin intake” vs “died of high capsaicin intake”
Feel better?
As a chili pepper lover myself I absolutely do not get this garbage trope of treating chili pepper consumption as some kind of contest. The idea is to add heat to your food - not prove your pathetic “manliness.”
In my opinion, anything above Habanero is just pointless masochism for no good reason at all.
I can eat a habanero without noticing the spice. Should I just stop trying to enjoy spicy food?
You clearly never had Beef Rendang. It is a Indonesian/Malay dish, which is a lot like a coconut curry. It is unbelievably spicy purely looking at it and you start to sweat. But it tastes amazing and I firmly believe it wouldn’t taste the same without that level of heat. It is an incredibly intense experience and I guess literally not for those weak of heart. But if you ever get the chance I highly suggest you at least taste it is unbelievably tasty.
Eh. Habanero tastes like ass. I’ve had spicier peppers with better flavor. And plenty of people, including myself, occasionally enjoy something hotter. I have a decent tolerance for spice, so I can dial things up and still enjoy it.
Habanero tastes like ass.
Most of the ones I’ve had were pretty crap… but, rarely, it’s actually possible to find Habanero that tastes the way Habanero should. They’re pretty good.
Next time I find proper ones, I’m planting them.
You may not get the same traits as the parent plant, that you’re looking for, if you grow chillies from seed
In my opinion, anything above Habanero is just pointless masochism for no good reason at all.
Idk man I agree otherwise, but tolerances rise. And different chilis taste different. Habanero has a nice, sweet taste, and naga yolokia has a bit sharper taste.
So it very much depends.
I don’t try to make “hot” food, but wanting a bit of heat in every meal has lead to my tolerances rising and Habanero just not cutting it for proper heat. (I think the heat is good when you almost feel it in your nipples.)
(I think the heat is good when you ~~almost~~ feel it in your nipples.)
Sorry what?
When the food is so spicy that at first you start sweating a bit on your face and then the heat slowly spreads from your face. So at the point when it’s enough to reach your nipples, the spiciness of the dish is just right.
“As a chili pepper lover myself I absolutely do not get this garbage trope of treating chili pepper consumption as some kind of contest. The idea is to add heat to your food - not prove your pathetic “manliness.””
I agree and so does Aunty Donna:
Warning, this content contains some Australian language
I think ghost peppers have fun uses and the Carolina reaper almonds from diamond are actually delicious and not that spicy (guessing they use very little). I agree that the mega potent stuff is better used for spicing up a 3 lb pot of chili.
I don’t get why anyone likes eating super spicy foods. After a certain level of heat there is no more flavor, just spice, and it clearly can cause serious problems for your body. What is the draw?
As someone who loves super spicy foods:
Heat doesn’t alter flavor. Capsaicin itself is flavorless, so if you just take a food and add capsaicin extract, it’ll increase the heat without changing flavor.
However, IMO there’s no point in doing that unless you’re trying to win a challenge. Most of us get capsaicin from peppers, and each pepper has a unique flavor that can add a lot of nuance to a dish.
Plus, I enjoy the heat sensation and am highly tolerant, so I can eat high heat foods and enjoy them. I would not recommend a spice-naive person start out on super hots.
I just find it fun. And super hot sauces don’t have to be devoid of flavor. There’s truly a lot of options when it comes to hot sauces. I have a rack specifically for super hot sauce bottles, lol.
My wife got me these really nice pepper flake blends from Flatiron for the holidays a few years ago and it was a fantastic gift. It included 5 different blends ranging from about 10,000 Scoville to about… 750,000K. It’s painful. Straight up. I can’t say it isn’t an unpleasant sensation. It’s just fun. Like I’ll be chuckling to myself while wheezing from the overwhelming heat.
There’s a Carolina Reaper version of Blue Almond almonds that I love. Super spicy. And low carb. Unfortunately I think they discontinued them because there isn’t a huge market for superhot enjoyers.
The Trinidad Scorpion pepper is hot, but has an EXTREMELY delicious fruity flavor that I haven’t had from any other pepper.
Carolina reapers just taste/smell like gasoline.
There’s a hot sauce I regularly get that’s scorpion pepper and prickly pear and it’s amazing. Fruity to the point of being almost bubble gum sweet at first and then the heat hits.
(Gonna get downvoted here, but hear me out here,)
Capsaicin isn’t a spice*. It’s not even a flavonoid. That is to say, it doesn’t trigger or act against the taste receptors in your tongue.
What the stuff does is trigger the heat receptors in your mouth (and skin and everywhere else you have heat receptors.) causing your body to feel like it’s burning.
“Spiciness” is what happens when your flavor receptors get overloaded. If you want to experience it, go get fresh garlic and chew a raw whole clove. (Do NOT swallow. And be prepared for massive indigestion. Raw garlic is not to be trifled with.) or maybe take the cinnamon challenge (spoonful, hold it in your mouth. Do not swallow,)
In any case capsaicin itself causes happy-hormones to be released, as a result of the sensation of being burned through. (The sensation also causes increased heart rate and that can get excessive, too.)(the people that like super-hot peppers are masochists.)
(*Spices are technically parts of plants used for flavor that generally aren’t the leaves. So the pepper itself can be a spice, don’t get me wrong. Most are quite fruity. The vast majority of people are not using hot peppers for that fruitiness, though.)
Hey, dont leave out attention whores! Hurting yourself so your audience can laugh is ANOTHER reason some of us got into spicy food!
There’s better ways, man.
Might i suggest learning sleight of hand. Or getting a puppy/kitten/something else?
I love spicy food, but as you said, only to a degree. The “spicy” part of the equation consists of both taste and the influence on your mouth’s temperature sensors. If the latter is hyperactive due to capsacain flavor goes out the window, at which point the food is no longer palatable to me.
You build a tolerance to the heat as you eat more and more spicy food.
After a certain level of heat there is no more flavor, just spice…
Again, your tolerance is what dictates the accuracy of this statement. I think Paqui chips taste terrible, the spice level has nothing to do with it. But, as the other commenter mentioned, you pursue this level of heat because you enjoy the rush it gives you. If you can handle the spice of super hot foods, you either need a ton of peppers (which just makes your good taste like peppers), or you need something insanely hot to add, so you can maintain the food’s good flavor, while also having a satisfying level of heat.
The draw is the rush.
It being dangerous is extremely rare, and the extreme heat can give a pretty big endorphin rush.
I ate the hottest level they had at Quaker steak and lube one time. I was laughing and crying at the same time while bouncing around in my seat. It had a bit of an endorphin rush, but also hurt heh Edit: got my free shirt though! Still have it I think. All about the swag baby
He tried to eat Chile? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile
This story has been edited to conform to AP style: chile, instead of chili.
WTF???
They actually changed it on purpose to be stupid?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile_(disambiguation)
“Chile may also refer to:
Food
Chile pepper, the spicy fruit of plants in the genus Capsicum”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper
“Chili peppers, also spelled chile or chilli”
If you mean Chili write Chili or Chilli, Chile is a country. Also why did AP feel they needed to change it, when the other spellings are equally correct, and more common.
That’s moronic.
Chile as a spice is also near impossible to search for, you will get exclusively results that are spelled chilli or chili. So why opt for a spelling that in every way is worse?
From early contact in Central America between Spanish explorers and Aztec folk, local spicy peppers — primarily the jalapeño type — were noted as “chiles”. Other similar fruits were also tagged as “chiles” — a term which had the indigenous sense “hot-to-the-taste.”
‘Chile’ has been used for a lot longer than ‘chili’. If anyone is spelling it wrong, it is you, not them.
If you play stupid games you win stupid prizes.
“Shouldn’t”. Yet here we are.
Tortilla chips probably shouldn’t need warning labels. Yet here we are.
