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How many of you have bitten into what looked like an innocent looking
pepper, only to find your mouth burning and your eyes watering a
minute later? Or worse, touched the juice of a pepper, and later
wiped your eye? The sensation is excruciating, to say the least.
But what causes those peppers to be so painful?
The answer is capsaicin, which is a powerful and stable alkaloid
produced by glands at the junction of the pepper’s placenta
and pod walls. It’s only produced by chili peppers, which
is why biting into a bell pepper doesn’t have the same effect.
In addition to being involved with childish dares and taunts, capsaicin
is used in pepper spray, as a repellant against mammalian pests
(it has no effect on birds), and as a marine coating as a safe deterrent
against barnacles.
The most famous capsaicin researcher was Wilbur Scoville, who devised
the Scoville scale to rate the heat of various peppers. This scale,
the preferred means of ranking peppers among chili lovers, is highly
subjective, loosely based on pure capsaicin being 16 million Scoville
units. In this pure form, chemists who handle it must wear full-body
protection and work in filtered toxic-substance labs. Don’t
worry—capsaicin that occurs in nature is never strong enough
to really hurt anyone.
Although eating peppers may be painful, they’re still good
for you. They’re high in vitamins A, C, and E, as well as
folic acid and potassium, and low in calories and sodium, with no
carbohydrates. In addition, they deliver an endorphin rush similar
to that of a good jog. So go ahead, have a pepper; just don’t
touch your eyes, and make sure you have some ice cream handy.
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