A medical case for ‘hotness’
WUWT: This came up in my feed today, and while it isn’t our usual fare about “heat”, but given the benefits touted by the study, I thought it was a good fit for our “curious things” section. The ‘heat’ adds years to life.
From the UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT and the department of flaming hot, comes this study:
Study finds association between eating hot peppers and decreased mortality
Like spicy food? If so, you might live longer, say researchers at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, who found that consumption of hot red chili peppers is associated with a 13 percent reduction in total mortality – primarily in deaths due to heart disease or stroke — in a large prospective study. more here
Live three more years, but your ass will be on fire the whole time.
If you’re not sweating, you’re not eating.
I’ve always liked spicy hot food, and I mean that literally. My folks told me that I wanted the hot stuff as a toddler. Don’t get me wrong, you can definitely make a dish too hot for my tastes, but that brings up my point: you build up tolerance for the heat. I don’t even notice any peppery heat in dishes that others find uncomfortably hot.
So if you want to take advantage of any life-extending properties of hot food, you don’t need to torture yourself. Go at it gradually and you’ll find yourself enjoying levels of heat that would have been too much for you not that long ago.
But a word of warning: never ever EVER challenge a Thai chef by telling him he can’t make the food too hot! Been there, done that, have vivid memories of the next day’s posterior “bullet wound.”
The Mexican came to the US for the first time and could find no authentic Mexican restaurants to eat at, so he ate anywhere.
A couple of weeks later, he was running to the doctor clutching his stomach.
“Doctor, doctor, help me, I’m dying, I’m dying, my belly, ohh!”
“What’s the matter?” The doc asked.
“My fire has gone out!”
Heat for heat’s sake is not tempting to me. The heat must be flavorful or it’s just a macho thing to brag about how much hot you can handle.
I was introduced to hot when a chef friend from Korea got me started on Kimchi. YUM!
By the way, you live longer because other people can’t stand being around your breath – therefore you don’t catch their germs. hehe
ADDICTION 2 CHILLIES
I have stumbled upon something never discovered. Using keen observations and a few beers, I have isolated a new gene and have filed for a patent! I’m going to name the Gene – addiction2chillies (A2C). This gene is the reason why Thai women are addicted to prik kee nu chilis.
http://goodstuffsworld.blogspot.com/2012/09/addiction-2-chillies.html
Had a Mex Girlfriend right out of high school. I had a very athletic rep in high school so her brothers welcomed me like I was Mex. However her old man tried to poison me weekly with shit that will literally melt the wax in your ears. Well mama didn’t raise no pussy. After a year I was eating nuclear peppers right along with him.
As it turned out many years later I think more about that old man than his daughter. A hard working SOB that got here legally and worked his ass off to see his kids through college.
Now I’m married to an Irish girl that thinks Black Pepper is to spicey.
I like the heat in certain foods but I’ve tried peppers that instantly turned my lips numb. Probably a good industrial use for that but not for my food.
Chiliheads Unite !
Al has it right, start slowly with a medium heat chili & slowly increase
to more potent chilis. You don’t need to get to the hottest chilis unless you want that flavor. be very careful with Habanero- Ghost- Scotch Bonnet etc.
These can be traumatic , try a sliver only if you just have to try it.
I ate some very hot peppers on a canoe camping trip one time, but I had to shit in the river to keep from setting the woods on fire.
Sounds like a Dairyman ploy to sell more ice cream. 😉
@Claudia – I couldn’t agree more about taste. If something’s so hot you can’t taste anything else, yer doin’ it wrong!
…and KIMCHI! I learned to love the real stuff when Uncle Sammy sent me to spend 13 months in Korea (1969-1970). I got mine right out of the crock buried uphill from my “friend’s” shack near Uijeongbu. You can’t get anything like that here in the US!
@ Bad_Brad .
*african american pepper.
MJA, Now days.
One other thing Al has right (and the cook doesn’t have to be Thai) is that it is a bad idea to challenge anyone to a hot contest. Even if you win, you lose. Years ago at a friends house some guys more macho than me we’re having a hot salsa contest. One guy that was holding his own had some salsa on his hand that he wasn’t aware of. He went out side to pee and came back in crying. You’ve got to be careful about where that stuff is.
So then there’s no cancer in Mexico? This IS news!
Or heart disease. Either way.
Last year I converted this recipe for jalepeno to a cayenne pepper jelly. Pretty damn good. I love the flavor of cayenne.
Ball Bluebook Preserves
https://www.freshpreserving.com/jalapeno-jelly-recipe-%7C-jalapeno-recipe—ball-fresh-preserving-br1247.html
@ Uncle Al
Camp Laguardia? Camp Red CLoud?
http://www.stripes.com/news/empty-camp-laguardia-gets-its-final-inspection-1.34135
Tell me a story Unc 🙂
I worked there for a bit in ’81. There, Stanley and Page
Perspective, that looks worth trying. Do you puree the same volume of peppers?
As far as “hot” sauces go, I like all the varieties of Cholula, especially the Chipotle.
Others, such as Tabasco and Sriracha, are just hot without adding any real pepper flavor to the dish.
Also, I gauge the hotness by the amount of sweat coming off the top of my head.
@joe6pak
I did. Was a pain in the ass but I split them to get most the seeds out first.
The first batch was short cayennes ( I misunderestimated) so I did a 50/50 with anaheim peppers. The second batch was all cayenne. Both were awesome!
wear gloves:)
I love cayenne in a not too painful way.
Guam is booney pepper island (a type of red
chile). Very hot tiny peppers that you have to
be careful with if you are not used to them.
I bet you could grow a cayenne there on Guam. Grew some jalepeno in pot on Okinawa.
@Reboot “Guam is booney pepper island (a type of red
chile). Very hot tiny peppers that you have to
be careful with if you are not used to them.”
There was a tiny yellow one like that on Oki that I also saw in Thailand. The first time I had it was in a soy sauce and ladled over a skirt steak. Damn.
@ Perspective
Pepper bushes grow crazy out here. I’ll plant another
cayenne, but not in a pot. I’ve read it’s the heat of the
sun that makes the peppers so much hotter near the equator.
Fricking things were so hot they pegged my tolerance level,
and that’s just a chile or a cayenne.
I’m happy with sucking on a bottle of Frank’s for a pepper
hit. We use boonie peppers and cayenne in dipping sauces out
here all of the time. It’s called pika=spicy.
http://guam.stripes.com/news/hot-tips-guam#sthash.Z4gVVofL.dpbs
@Perspective – Although my official unit was in Ascom, I was a roving medical equipment repairman (MOS 35G20) and worked out of the 43rd MASH at Camp Humphreys. Yes, this was the MASH that was the model for the books, movie, and TV show. Medical units were very interesting places back then because many of the doctors were draftees and many of those had the same FTA attitude as enlisted draftees.
Vietnam was getting the lion’s share of personnel and resources at that time, and although the TO&E called for my area to be serviced by two three-man teams, all we had was one two-man team to visit all the medical, dental, and veterinary facilities in the 7th Infantry region. I worked my butt off but had a huge degree of autonomy so when I had time off I could use my jeep or pickup for recreation trips and get gasoline at any US or Korean military motor pool, and even Korean police compounds. All in all, I enjoyed my Korean experiences very much.
Reminds me of the ol’ joke.
Doc: I want you to eat a bushel of habeneros every day.
Peter Puffer: OK, but will that cure my AIDS?
Doc: No, but it will teach you what your asshole is for.
====================
I can vouch for those folks talking about Guam’s boonie peppers. They were a staple for many GIs.
Capsicum kills germs. The counties that use the most hot peppers are least known for uncleanliness; e.g., Mexico and India.
somehow, i got the job of making habanero stuff…..this year it was relish with sweet red peppers….i used six wooden spoons, which were left in the pot the whole three hours of cooking down….i paint the handles red, and give them away for christmas – the “spicy spoons” will stir some wicked heat into anything….
other years, i have dried them, and made them into pepper with the coffee grinder – this job has to be done on the back porch on a windy day wearing a mask….
the worst part is cleaning up – once those peppers meet water, the whole house is full of pepper spray fumes….
this is a labor of love for the mens – i can’t handle anything hotter than a banana pepper…most times, they actually thank me…… 🙂
Cool story Uncle Al!
Korea was still the wild, wild west when you were there. Was some settled by the time I was there. Did spend some time living in a quonset. They were will used in the 80s.
Some old pics of the camps I found.
http://campsabrekorea.com/us-camps-korea-pastpresent.html
will- still Grr
@Perspective – Great photos, thanks! But that photo of the 43rd MASH was taken way after I was there in ’69-’70 – there were none of those apartment blocks there back then.
The link also says it was “Camp Moiser” which is a misspelling of Camp Mosier. My memory may be flaking out on me and the 43rd may well have been at Mosier. I spent most of my nights there…in a Quonset hut heated with diesel fuel burning in 55-gal drums made into stoves. Oddly enough, once they got hot there was almost no diesel stink.