Hot food, spicy food, spicy food… many of us love it. While others break out in a sweat just thinking about it. Why do you break out in a sweat when you eat it?
Is it not spicy enough for you? You'll be amazed at how mild the Dutch tend to eat, even if they think it's hot food! In warmer countries it is perfectly normal to add an extra spicy pepper to the salad. Or spice up the curry with herbs that make the flames shoot out of your mouth.
Also read:'7 creative ways to eat kale'
Hot peppers contain capsaicin. And that substance gives certain receptors in your skin an incentive to take action. That stimulus and action – the sweating – normally only occurs at high temperatures. The capsaicin therefore has the same effect on your skin and sweat glands as summer heat!
Your tongue can also react violently to the stimulus. The same capsaicin activates the pain receptors in your tongue, giving you that very pleasant (ahem) burning sensation when you eat spicy food. Unpleasant, but fortunately harmless. Drinking water is not the cure by the way. It is better to opt for a sip of milk. Milk separates the capsaicin and the pain receptors. Or a piece of prawn crackers. Prawn crackers are greasy and that oil has the same effect as milk.
The hottest pepper in the world bears the name Carolina Reaper † A special scale has been developed to measure the hotness of peppers:the Scoville scale. And this Carolina scores an average of 1,569,300 'hot units' on this scale, but outliers of up to 2.2 million hot units have also been measured. In comparison, sambal oelek scores about 2000. Tabasco about 5000 and a Jalapeño pepper is between 2500 and 30,000 hot units. The average Dutch person finds something spicy if it is between 500 and 1000 units.
