To understand how we experience flavor, we have to stop thinking of ‘taste’ as a single event. Take a bite of something spicy, say a slice of jalapeño. Before it even touches your togue, you’ve likely already “tasted” it. Compounds like pyrazines and terpenes give off a distinct spicy scent. Because you “tasted” the pepper already you expect it to be spicy this is called orthonasal olfaction (aroma). The moment the pepper hits your tongue, within 50ms, your brain registers the tastant. As you swallow, you force air to the back of your throat retronasal olfaction which your brain perceives as an individual flavor.

But what happens when expectations fail? Imagine biting into a Carolina Reaper cheese curl expecting it to be spicy, only to find it’s just salty. As soon as the curl hits our tongue, we would detect the salty tastant. Our brain would reload trying to see if chemesthesis would turn on. When that expectation fails to materialize within 400ms, the brain would perceive the cheese curl as plain rather than spicy. Taste is interesting because it’s subjective. Someone with a high spicy threshold would perceive the cheese curl as salty, while someone with a low spicy threshold would perceive the cheese curls as super spicy.

The anatomy of a ghost pepper reveals a sophisticated design centered on its potent biochemical defense mechanism. Its outer fruit wall is composed primarily of carbohydrates and fats. The flesh is shielded by a hydrophobic waxy layer designed to repel smaller invaders offering no assumed protection against the crushing force of mammalian teeth. Within the pepper lies the septae or “cartilage” which houses the placental region. This is where capsaicin, a potent alkaloid molecule is produced and stored. Because capsaicin is lipophilic ( fat-loving) and hydrophobic, it does not dissolve in water, which creates a volatile reaction in the mouth.

When you consume a ghost pepper or a concentrated spicy snack, your body’s natural digestive defenses work against you. As you chew, your brain triggers the production of saliva to aid in digestion. However, since saliva is roughly 98% water, it acts like a “waterfall” that spreads the hydrophobic capsaicin oils across every surface of your mouth. The oil bypasses the protective mucus layer on your palate, tongue, and inner cheeks which is normally there to help food particles stick together. It heads straight for your cells (the target). Since your cells are encased in fatty lipid bilayers, the fat-loving capsaicin can latch on and bind with ease.

The molecules lock into non-selective cation receptors, triggering a calcium signaling event to the brain. This activation of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) forces the brain to categorize the intake: Is this energy the body needs? Does this trigger nostalgia, dopamine or comfort? Is this being consumed simply for the pleasure of the experience?

It gets even crazier: while this protein-coupled signaling occurs on the molecular level, the actual human experience is that your mouth feels literally on fire. Most people reach for the wrong thing to stop it, and here is why:

• Water: This is like river rafting a class 2 that quickly turns into a class 6 because of recent rainfall and whatnot. Since the spicy oils don’t dissolve in water, you are just rafting the fire to new parts of your mouth.

• Bread: This assumes the spicy molecules haven’t already stuck to the mucus membranes. Bread can help a little, but it usually isn’t enough.

• Milk: This is the winner winner chicken dinner. Milk creates a new complex with the alkaloid, effectively neutralizing the burn. (pro-tip: use labneh)

However, I didn’t learn any of that until college. Because of my religious upbringing, I was taught that G-d created Earth in parts and pieces over seven days; it was simply ‘magic’. There was light and dark, then water and land, no science involved. Then came the plants, the animals, and finally, mankind. All these complex organisms just appeared. It was the ultimate answer to the ‘chicken and the egg’ joke: the chicken came first, obviously.

Hot peppers appeared 50 million years ago, having evolved from a ‘bland’ tasting berry. I’ll get back to the “berry” in a minute. To some, 50 million years sounds like a bubbe-meise¹; if you are reading religious texts, such a timeline does not exist. According to the Big Bang theory, however, life and organisms are hundreds of millions of years old.

The difficulty in understanding life that old is that many religious texts only count time with the start of their religion; before that, time was relative. What isn’t taught in religious schools is the commentary that G-d created and destroyed the earth multiple times. But what does “destroyed” mean? Did G-d destroy the entire planet, or just certain features? I discovered this deeper commentary as a young adult, and it changed my perspective. I realized a tree could potentially be millions of years old. They don’t teach you about Lillith in school, only Eve.

Back to the berry. I don’t actually believe the berry was bland. You see, plants, humans and all living organisms have an innate drive rooted in Darwinian theory to survive and multiply. They achieve this by spreading their seeds or through reproduction, whether alone or with a partner. This is how they stay alive: by creating more of themselves. Even if the individual dies, their genetic essence lives on.

And if you think about it, for a species to survive, it must cover as much ground as possible. If a pepper were as spicy then as we know it today, what bee or bird in its right mind would die over a berry? None. Therefore, certain creatures lack specific sensory abilities, such as chemesthesis, the sensation of the burning and retronasal olfaction, the ability to process aromas, allowing one to differentiate between the flavor of a jalapeno versus a habanero beyond just the spicy sensation. Birds were the primary seed dispersers that would eat these berries and spread the seeds across the land, ensuring the plant can evolve and thrive.

The botanist’s books claim the berry was bland. I think the berry was similar to the Sichuan Pepper, in that it was very small and produced a chemesthesis sensation. Sichuan is not part of the Capsicum genus, but it contains Sanshools, which activate the same receptors as capsaicin to create that numbing, chemesthesis feeling.

Evolutional biology suggests that humans didn’t exist 50 million years ago, but I wonder if every living thing on Earth has a bioactive compound that innervates and creates different reactions in humans. If whatever or whoever created life designed each plant to have actives that cause an effect in us – it’s so cool.

Then there is nurture, evolving through adaptation. For example, the hot pepper began as a berry, but as the world heated up, it adapted to new temperatures by hardening its skin against increased UV exposure. This shift ultimately protected its antioxidants from denaturing. While its physical ‘nurture’ changed, its ‘nature’ remained the same; its active compounds did not alter. This raises the question of coevolution: was everything in this dimension created with the inherent drive to thrive, live and heal itself?

Note

1. Yiddish term for made up nonsense

However you interpreted ‘inferno’ is exactly how I meant it. No pun intended, but I mean it in two ways: first, as a literal measurement on the Scoville scale; and second, as a complete emotional hell: something sharp enough to cut through the noise and force me to be present.

I’ve had an affinity for spicy things for as long as I can remember. My earliest “spicy” memory is from 6th grade, right at the start of a strange cultural boom. It was the peak era of diet culture. My peers were all on diets, but their parents still packed them lunches: platinum-level greatness in my eyes. Meanwhile, a bunch of us were stuck with the “disgusting” healthy lunches: the kind that would come home uneaten, making our parents wonder what we were eating.

I used my babysitting money to buy two jars of pepperoncinis a day and used them as currency in the lunchroom economy. Two to three pepperoncinis were worth a sandwich and a snack. The marketing of this era caught on to this shift. Suddenly, the commercial world was exploding with Carolina Reaper chips and viral challenges, treating a spicy snack like a world-record novelty. I started to go after those spicy snacks myself, not to trade for sandwiches anymore but maybe for friendships, lol.

I had a friend whose uncle owned a candy store in Brooklyn, and she would always bring the coolest stuff to school. One day, she brought these ‘Red 40’ dyed cheese curls that were Ghost Pepper spicy. She had an entire closet at home filled with junk food from her uncle, and looking back at our ten-year friendship, I sometimes wonder: was I more interested in the closet of junk, or the friendship itself?

My last interaction with eating a hot pepper was only a few years ago. It proved that most people still don’t understand the difference between a “novelty” and a real affinity. My coworkers thought a habanero was the peak of intensity. I showed up with a Trinidad Scorpion and a pair of gloves. When I ate it raw, they realized I wasn’t performing, I wasn’t flirting, and I wasn’t making small talk. While I stayed present in the ‘inferno’ they were there for a spectacle: they cried and were in a panic, but I came prepared with milk and bread.

When I look deeply at my relationship with spicy, I see it through three paths: emotional, psychological, and physical. These correlate directly to feeling stifled, masking and actual pain.

What’s fascinating is how a hot pepper combats each of these:

• The Mask: You can’t wear a mask when your face is flushed and sweating.

• The Stifle: That ‘stifled’ feeling we carry mentally becomes a tangible, physical sensation of heat.

• The Release: Because you cry, you are no longer repressing your emotions. You are finally allowed to feel the pain, sometimes literal referred pain if you overdid it. And I have definitely been there. There’s nothing quite like feeling on top of the world enjoying some spicy chips, only to find yourself two hours later lying on the cold cement in extreme kidney pain, feeling like you are actually dying, lol. The cement was the only surface that could meet me where I was.

As a “yardner” and a community plot gardener, I’ve learned that the plant’s heat is a mirror of its environment. The plant creates capsaicin oils as a defense mechanism when it’s under stress, specifically when you don’t water it. I’ve had Scorpion hybrids, Ghosts, and Reapers turn sweet on me because I cared for them like my other temperate needy fruits. To get that 700,000 to 2,500,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), the plant needs to feel the constraint of the soil; it needs to adapt to survive. Some perspective: When eating a Reaper you are hovering between Human Pepper Spray (⁓2 million SHU) and Bear Spray (⁓3 million SHU).

The evolution of the plant is interesting. Other creatures avoid these fruits because the heat is a deterrent like lectins or saponins. I pose this question to you: When you crave spicy food, what is actually going on in your life?

Is it the flavor you are after or are you looking for a way to feel alive?

I had always wanted a dog, but my parents like all parents did not want to wind up taking care of one. I had always liked ‘interesting’ animals. At the zoo, while everyone else was into the gorillas or elephants, I was into the alligators and ball pythons. I’d just chill there and watch the alligator’s eyes watch me while I watched it. You’d think my parents would have been glad that I became interested in a ‘normal’ pet. As a sibling of mine became responsible, my parents got them a bearded dragon and then an iguana, yet I still didn’t have my dog.

Luckily, people in the neighborhood gladly allowed me to spend time with their dogs; I took on the role of walking, bathing, and sitting them. I spent my youth taking care of dogs big and small. I became the ‘know-it-all’ regarding breeds and their specific ailments. In my high school yearbook, they even thought I would go on to become a dog and exotic animal vet.

In my early teens, I met a family who let me ‘time-share’ their dogs. I would take them for a few weeks a month to walk and feed them, but ultimately, they belonged to that family. Fast forward a few years: I had my permit and would drive to farmer’s markets that had rescues showing. While practicing driving through canyons and on freeways, I made it a point to visit every rescue. Finally, I got a rescue puppy. He was a hybrid: a fast runner with rat-hunter ancestry. He would go crazy monitoring squirrels on hikes, though not quite as crazy as a Vizsla I know.

He was my best pal. We went camping together, and I realized that even a ‘domesticated wolf’ can be scared of the wilderness. I assumed he could smell everything and see in the dark and wouldn’t be spooked, but he barked at every sound. I stayed up all night telling him he was overreacting. Eventually, he became chill enough for thru-hiking, which I think was just maturity. As I got older and talked less, he was still just there; he understood my non-verbal cues.

I had him from my mid-teens into my early 30s. When he died, I was so angry at the genetics books. They said he was supposed to live six years longer. I wondered what I did wrong, but I didn’t want him to live in pain. Those books don’t consider quality of life. The summer before he died, he stopped eating. He was disinterested in chicken, meat, and his own food. He was wasting away. Vets kept talking about his age, but I didn’t want to hear it. Even the holistic vet said surgery would be too hard on him. When we finally had to let him go, I realized I could never have been a vet.