“YOUR RUINING ALL OF MY HARD WORK!” “YOU MAKE ALL OF YOUR FOOD TASTE THE SAME!” “YOUR TASTE BUDS ARE GOING TO BE DESENSITIZED BY THE AGE OF 20!” .. Every week night for most of my adolescence at my dinner table in Havertown, Pennsylvania, I heard the same lecture as I dumped varieties of hot sauce onto every delicious meat, vegetable, and starch that my mother prepared.I have yet to escape this nagging at college due to a majority of my contemporaries nightly comments, “How do you handle all of that hot sauce?!” and the continuous exclamations, “Your tongues gonna fall off!!”. Some of my friends, however, have a similar infatuation with hot sauce as me and join me in submerging my lunches and dinners in the glorious condiment. What is the cause for this difference in taste? Why can some enjoy spicy foods that cause others to break a sweat? Could spicy foods be beneficial for my health? Does an excess of heat actually harm my taste buds? I turned to science for answers to these questions.
Medical daily explains a study on the subject who’s main researcher happens to be Nadia Byrnes, a doctoral candidate at Penn State University. This study, presented at the Institute of Food Technologies meeting in 2013, consisted of 184 participants between the ages of 18 and 45. Researchers used the Arnett Inventory of Sensation Seeking (AISS) test.This test groups people into thrill seekers (high AISS score) versus humans less open to risk taking (low AISS score).”The participants were than given 25 micrometers of capsaicin — the spicy component in chili peppers — in their meals, and told to rate how much they enjoyed their meal as time passed and the burn became more intense. The researchers found that as the burn became more intense, those who scored under the average AISS score quickly began to dislike the food, while those who scored above it liked the food – even as its intensity increased. Those who scored near the average score also began to dislike the food but not as quickly as those below the average”. This study concludes that a person that generally seeks thrilling sensations is more inclined to enjoy spicy foods then those people who do not like to participate in new experiences and ignores any potential anatomical reasons for enjoying “hot” flavors.
ABC news released an article on health benefits of enjoying spicy foods. They described a study by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences that researched the diets of approximately half a million people in a seven year longitudinal observational experiment. The results showed that participants who ate spicy foods nearly every day had a “14 percent lower risk of death”, compared to those who ate spicy foods only once or less every 7 days. Could this result induce you to begin adding hot sauce to your list of things to pick up at the grocery store? I believe that this evidence brings about enough of a possible correlation to say “yes”. In addition, despite some of my friends and families accusations, there are no known risk factors of adding spicy foods to your diet on your taste buds.
An article on live science quotes Paul Bosland, “horticulturist, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University and identifier of several of the world’s spiciest peppers”. The reputation comes from the chemical capsaicin making the mouth temporarily numb, giving the sensation that your tastebuds are being damaged. This is just a defense mechanism your body has which causes your taste receptors to send a “signal to your brain that there’s pain in the form of hotness or heat”, resulting in your brain producing endorphins causing numbness. There is absolutely no evidence showing that hot foods damage the mouth.
I hope that, if you are a spice lover like me, I have given you the information needed to defend your perspective! Feel free to continue to cover your food in Tobasco as much as you would like. Also, be understanding of your non-risk taking contemporaries who do not have the same obsession that you do and find it difficult to fathom your dieting choices.
Photo Retrieved From: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/65/43/78/654378ba9a7d47d78ab1e52a4abbe9b0.jpg
