Most spicy-lovin people I know have grown into it, appreciating and tolerating hotter and hotter items over the years. I do love very sugary tastes, very bitter tastes, very sour tastes, and very umami tastes, but not too much salt, and it’s not because I don’t taste the subtle flavors, but because I love experiencing food that makes my face change. Chileheads love the experience: besides the endorphin rush, there are delightful hidden flavors that emerge only if you can breathe through the pain. Habeneros, for example, have an unique sweetness underneath, while serranos are bitter. I don’t really know any supertasters, but I’ve noticed that the people who don’t like spicy food, don’t have any desire to experience the intensity of food in any of the five tastes. If their face puckers up from a lime or bitter-melon, they are unhappy — whereas I delight in that. (And what is Bitter Melon, btw? I’ve had it in an Indian restaurant — amazing.)

And what about the dark meat versus white meat preference? Some (chilehead or chilephobic) love the taste of white meat, and think dark meat is bitter and less flavorful, whereas others are all into dark meat, and think white meat people are under mass-hypnosis.

So yeah, take that Mr. 1970s-limited-worldview-surgeon. And keep at it Mr. Dewitt — just stop being such a pussy!

A hospital called in bc a nurse gave a patient 100 units of insulin rather than 10?!?!?!

What was the advice? Call the next of kin?

I actually wandered away from the crowd and started suffering on my own. A friend came over and started to shepherd me through what I honestly started thinking of as a bad trip.

No vivid hallucinations, but somebody to talk me down was much appreciated.

I dont know if i buy the whole “nontaster/supertaster” argument. Just because i love and can tolerate really spicy food does not mean that i dont experience the same pain that a “supertaster” has.

Oh, noes. Oppression by the gustatypicals.

Here is my recipe for a simple belize style hot sauce.

Right now, I have a few dozen seedlings that easily germinated from the peppers I used in that recipe.

I honestly didn’t feel much of the stuff in my mouth. My stomach, however, was a totally different matter. within 5 minutes of finishing, I was woozy and had to sit down. I got flushed and started sweating profusely shortly after that. Then I threw up and had this delicious mixture in my nose as well. I have to imagine it was like being deliberately pepper sprayed.

So it wasn’t the taste or tastebuds that got me- it was my body just refusing to deal with that much capsicum.

i “won” a bottle of the hot sauce as a result. one tiny drop of that stuff is enough to add a nice bit of warmth to a pot of chili, or a noticeable kick to a bowl.

So these people react differently when hot sauce hits their tongue? Is it the same way on the way out?

The Ghost Pepper is now 3rd.

I’m a chili head. I have eaten the ghost pepper straight up- with no hesitation. It is euphoria. capsicum alters my mood and makes me extremely happy.

Most people who cry about hot food cant taste the difference a good cup of coffee and crap and appear to me to be unsophisticated in their culinary adventures. But this might just me being a snob.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhtn3HROvgA

What impacts more, is that stuff tastes DIFFERENT to me! People usually have a hard time with this concept, especially when it comes from a child. Broccoli is bitter to me, so are most green vegetables. Juices that you would call mildly sour are almost unbearable sometimes. I never liked a lot of fruits as a child, as they either tasted very bitter, or very sour.

Unfortunately most people think that taste is absolute (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary) – if it tastes good to them, then it is “good tasting” and everyone ought to love it. It is not willfulness, or being spoiled as a child, or some kind of self centered behavior; I, and the people like me, really don’t like the taste of some stuff that other people like! Strawberries were inedible to me until I was well into my thirties, and even now, years later are only somewhat edible.

I supposes there must be some compensations. Maybe I have a tremendously subtle sense of taste, and can enjoy things in a way that others can’t. I don’t really think so, I just have a much more limited array of stuff I like to eat. I also have gotten good at eating vegetables quickly to get rid of them before I eat the rest of my meal.

“.. and before I could get it closer than 2 feet to my mouth, my nostrils flared red hot just from the odor alone.”

“The initial sensation was fire, but that doesn’t really explain it well enough. It was like fire had turned into a fractal, it was so hot. There was fire, then it got hotter, and then hotter again, then even hotter than that, then searing hot fire, then that fire caught on fire, and the fire on the fire caught on fire, and then spiraled into another dimension of spicy than I had ever even comprehended was possible.”

“I’m not sure I would ever do it again, though in the moment of the repercussions I was emphatically muttering WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS I THINKING and even began to sing songs to myself as a coping mechanism, like turning We Built This City into I Bit This Chili.”

Any reason all these top ones are from England?

I don’t know if I’m a supertaster or not… I love sour candy and can handle the super sour stuff.

My problem with hot foods is that the pain is so unbearable, I can’t taste anything. It’s as if my tastebuds have been seared off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR7jvw9W-TQ

The fruits are fantastic – when they first begin to emerge from the bud you can see where the nickname of ghost chilli comes from due to the incredibly pale colour; a kind of light creamy lime tone. I highly recommend them to any aspiring chileheads – it’s well worth the cheap price of seeds and a lot of fun to grow!

Kudos to this article’s author for conjuring up the subtle pun of “pepper bell curve”, hehe…

I never got the fascination with hot food. I want to actually be able to taste what I’m eating.

Anyway, to bring this back on target, I bought a bottle of Dave’s Gourmet (of Dave’s Insanity Sauce fame) Ghost Pepper sauce from cost plus not long back. It doesn’t list a Scoville rating on the bottle, but an online source had it pegged at 575,000. Dave’s website just says that it’s their hottest sauce, and is somewhat hotter than their Ultimate Insanity.

It is really transcendentally spicy. 2-4 drops in a large bowl of Chinese soup makes it nearly inedible to average people, but delicious to me. 1/2 tsp or so in a bloody mary makes me see stars, in a good way. 2 bloody marys like that, and not only did I get a monster stomach-ache (which I am not prone to), but it was the first time in my life that it hurt to urinate, with an intense burning sensation through my entire urinary tract that took a couple hours to die down. It was a real experience, and the same thing has happened each time I have at least 2 bloody maries with a sufficient dosage in them. I have not–and will not–try it straight.

I am completely fascinated by the mental side effects of consumption of this stuff, so I keep experimenting with it. Aside from the flavor and pain, with enough of a dose my head feels very floaty… a sense of euphoria. The closest thing I can relate it to is the feeling of just having escaped some terrible fate, or almost like a runner’s high. It’s very weird and very pleasant.

I bought that bottle about a month ago, and I’m 3/4 of the way through it. I carry it around to experiment with. I went back to cost plus yesterday and bought 4 more bottles.