Whether you love or hate the heat, one thing is certain: the more spice, the more it hurts. While some can tolerate super hot peppers and champion spicy food for its health benefits, others have less-than-pleasant experiences and even wind up in the emergency room. They often eat peppers like the Carolina Reaper for fun, participate in deathly hot wing challenges, and show off their spice tolerance at hot sauce expos around the country. “Hot culture,” as Currie calls it, is a growing community of people who can’t get enough of the heat. But some seem to enjoy putting themselves through the spicy pain. Neither does this video of BuzzFeed staffers attempting the same. You might’ve seen the mega-viral clip from YouTuber Lizzy Wurst of her and a friend trying to stomach Carolina Reapers. What’s new is that they are now hotter than ever before, and along with the dramatic increase in record-breaking peppers is a rise in people who eat them in a way that’s almost an extreme sport.įrom pepper-eating contests and extreme menu items that require liability waivers to videos on social media of people eating the Carolina Reaper, Bhut jolokia (ghost pepper), and Samyang "fire noodles" - it’s not hard to find people rising to a spicy challenge that often ends in pain and tears. The heat-causing capsicums have become a dietary staple in cultures all over the world, valued for their flavor and ability to prevent food spoilage in hot climates. The potent plants - which belong to the capsicum genus in the nightshade family - have been around for thousands of years, originating in Central America and spreading to other continents through trade and globalization. In other words, the Carolina Reaper is nearly off-the-charts spicy - or as Currie said, “stupid hot.” It won the Guinness World Record for the world's hottest chili pepper in 2013, dethroning the “Trinidad Scorpion Butch T” pepper, and has retained the title ever since - although Currie said he's already bred another pepper that's nearly twice as hot, called “ Pepper X.” That’s about 600 times hotter than a jalapeño pepper at 2,500–8,000 SHU and about 8 times hotter than a habanero, which ranges between 200,000–350,000 SHU. “His initial measurement was the hottest he’d ever seen,” Currie said.Īccording to Currie, the Carolina Reaper ranges between 1.5 million and 2 million SHUs, depending on the pepper and the growing season. It was 2005 when he teamed up with chemistry professor Cliff Calloway and his team of graduate students at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. After a few successful growing seasons, Currie decided to find out where the pepper ranked on the Scoville scale, which uses Scoville heat units (SHU) to measure capsaicin. “I knew it was hot because when we gave them out to everyone, they started vomiting,” Currie said. So when Currie, founder of the PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, South Carolina, hybridized plants using nine chili peppers from Asia and one from the Caribbean, he also created something spicier than anything he’d ever tasted: the now world-famous “Carolina Reaper.” The most common capsaicinoid is capsaicin, which gives the pepper its fiery edge. “I wanted more of that good stuff," Currie told BuzzFeed News. In fact, he was trying to raise the levels of capsaicinoids, compounds found in peppers, because he believes they have medicinal properties and can help protect against heart disease and cancer. Ed Currie wasn't looking to make the world's hottest pepper when he began crossbreeding chilies from around the globe in 2003.
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