We've all been there: believing you can handle the heat of a spicy meal, only to discover, to your dismay and the laughter of your friends, that your mouth has turned into a fiery inferno that, like hiccups, seems to last forever but actually only lasts a short while.
Why do spicy foods taste hot?
Capsaicinoids, a non-nutritive chemical molecule that our brain interprets as heat or, in excess, even pain, are the source of the heat found in spicy foods. foodIt’s important to note that our taste buds only detect sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami flavors. They don’t detect capsaicinoids. Rather than just alerting our tongue, spices trigger nerve endings that are present almost everywhere on our bodies, to varying degrees. This is part of the so-called common chemical sense.
Danielle Reed, a renowned taste researcher who led a study to determine whether capsaicin sensitivity might be genetic, says that “if you put sugar on your skin, you don't feel sweetness, but rather than having specialized receptors or cells, the heat triggers receptors that are common throughout the body at the end of sensory nerve endings.” “So if you put a chili pepper on your eye – and you shouldn't do that – you'll get a hot sensation. burning sensation.”
That's why we often remember the “heat” of an extremely spicy meal, even after the heat sensation in our mouths has faded. “Mucous membranes in particular—not to be insensitive, but we call it 'the burn that bites twice'—have much more accessible sensory nerve fibers,” Reed says.
The reason we feel such heat can be inferred from our response to capsaicin. Since birds do not perceive capsaicin as heat, unlike mammals, a popular explanation is that plants evolved to allow birds to continue eating the plant’s fruit (chili pepper) and spreading its seeds while deterring mammals from consuming and harming the plant itself. The human experience of spicy foods also offers a disturbing glimpse into the potential harms COVID 19 may be causing changes in our bodies. One of the most common signs of COVID is the loss of taste and smell, but many patients have also completely lost the ability to sense heat from capsaicinoids, suggesting that the virus may be changing our nerve endings in fundamental ways.
Given that our nerve endings warn us not to consume capsaicin, why have people been eating chili peppers for nearly 10,000 years? Harold McGee, a food science author, says people are “perverse.” “So, from time to time, we can enjoy pain—a roller coaster ride is an example of something that is scary but harmless. Our bodies can respond to an essentially unpleasant sensation by releasing hormones that dull the painful sensation and make you feel better afterwards. This allows us to enjoy an uncomfortable sensation for its own reason.”
How to stop heartburn from spicy foods?
The bad news is that there is no miracle cure that can extinguish the five-alarm inferno burning between your tonsils.
“The fundamental problem is that by the time we feel the pain, the compounds have already entered us, so the idea that we can immediately remove them just doesn't work in practice,” McGee says.
Think he's not telling the truth? Reed, a taste expert, unfortunately agrees. “I know there are a lot of home remedies out there, but I don't know of any scientific principles that will get you out of it,” she continues.
Milk and other dairy products
Consuming dairy products is the most widely recommended home remedy because they contain caseins, proteins that bind perfectly to capsaicinoids to prevent any capsaicin that is not already attached to a receptor from attaching to it. Instead, the now neutralized compounds are safely flushed down your esophagus. In this regard, whole milk is considered superior to skim milk by many foodies.
“In practice, you can eliminate the reinforcements that would prolong the sensation, but that won’t alleviate what you’re already feeling,” McGee says. “Fats, including milk, tend to accumulate extraneous molecules in our mouths.”
Bread, honey and other distractions
Other commonly recommended remedies for spicy meals, like bread or honey, are really just diversionary measures. “It’s possible that bread is a solid, so you’re chewing it and generating all sorts of other tactile sensations that distract you from the pain,” McGee says. “Like bread, sweetness is a distraction, and so your brain is splitting up the attention it can give to things.”
Ice cubes
While the “heat” you get from a chili pepper has nothing to do with temperature, McGee advises literally chilling the food for faster relief from spicy heat. “The temperature effect is probably the quickest way to fix it,” he says. “Take an ice cube out of your drink and suck on it.”
How to make spicy foods less spicy before eating them?
It goes without saying that if you want mild cooking, you should use fewer chilies. However, we have all made the mistake of misjudging a recipe or forgetting that younger, smaller chilies have a higher spice content than older, larger chilies.
Similar to the relief of the burning sensation If you've been eating spicy food, there are other common but unproven scientific methods to reduce the heat in a dish, such as adding honey. However, the only surefire way is to dilute it. So you may need to increase the amount of each element in your recipe by two or more, excluding the chili peppers.
Keeping a mouthwash handy is an additional strategy to prevent capsaicin from reaching those nerve endings. “In particular, something like sour cream, which is greasy, will absorb that substance and coat your tongue to make it difficult,” McGee says.
But if you're determined not to have an experience similar to the one where you dared to eat a Naga Viper and maybe even had steam coming out of your ears, there's one rule that will surely keep you safe: ordering the grilled cheese sandwich is totally acceptable.
