Yesterday, I talked about spice.
What is spice?
Like literal spice.
Spice: a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring, coloring, or preserving food.
Wikipedia
That’s not what I meant.
I’m talking about heat. Real heat.
What does it mean when food is spicy?
Heat comes from hot peppers. Chili peppers.
You bite into a habanero pepper and you can’t feel you’re tongue anymore and you’re crying.
But hey, your sinuses are cleared.
Peppers are spicy because of a component called Capsaicin.
Capsaicin: an irritant for mammals, including humans, that produces a sensation of burning in any tissue with which it comes into contact.
Wikipedia
I love heat.
I love to eat spicy food until I’m crying and sweating and breathing hard.
But why?
I’m not the only one that feels this way.
Hot peppers evolved to produce Capsaicin as a way deter mammals. Capsicum plant seeds are usually dispersed by birds. Mammals have molar teeth which destroy the Capsicum seed and prevent it from spreading. Birds don’t have pain receptors to taste Capsaicin. Mammals do.
Capsaicin was the plant’s way of saying, “Hey mammals! Don’t eat me so I can live, yeah?”
And we humans said, “Nah, I like the pain. Give me more pain.”
We are the only mammals that seek out hot peppers for it’s burning sensation.
We like the pain.
Because the pain causes a euphoric effect afterwards.
If you experience enough pain from Capsaicin, endorphins release. Pain becomes pleasure.
I wonder if Capsaicin is the reason we prepare our food. Humans are the only species to care about how their food tastes. Is Capsaicin the prerequisite to this?
Birds eat it, but they can’t taste it.
I wonder if the requirement for intraspecial chefs is tasting and liking Capsaicin.
If another mammal discovered the wonders of spicy food, would they turn into a bunch of furry Bobby Flays?
Is there such a mammal?
Yes, there is.
I lied before. We aren’t the only ones that seek out Capsaicin for its pain.
The tree shrew also does.
It seems Remy from Ratatouille wasn’t a rat in an attic, but a mouse in a tree.