I recently gave my chickens a plate of scrambled eggs with a healthy dump of red pepper flakes on top. My neighbor, who was visiting at the time, said, won't that burn their throats? I assured her that no, it did not burn them, but then she asked me how, as that much spice would put the most courageous of men out of commission. And I'm not gonna lie here, folks, I didn't actually know the answer. I just knew that peppers didn't bother my chickens. And that led to today's episode Peppers, Spice, and everything unnice. Capsaicin and how it affects the world. I'm Mimi Fots, and this is Hello from the Van. Let's get back to those chickens and the science of spice. My neighbor's honest question was why don't chickens get hurt by red pepper spice? It's a valid question. For the answer, we are turning to the resident fancy pants science guy regarding all things peppers and spice. His name is Joshua Tewesbury, and he has spent his life studying peppers and figuring out the how and why of this cultural and culinary phenomenon. Here's what we know humans have been using peppers to spice up their food for over 8,000 years. Archaeobotanists at the Smithsonian have discovered that people in the Americas have been cultivating and growing specific strains of peppers for over 6,000 years. And it makes sense. If you're limited to a diet of locally grown yams and potatoes, you'd definitely want something to add some different flavor profiles. But there is another theory for pepper cultivation over thousands of years, one that Tookesberry has noted throughout his research, microbiology. Before the advent of modern refrigeration, food spoilage was a big issue. Imagine your mom makes the best food you've ever eaten, but it doesn't even last the night due to heat and humidity. Enter the pepper. The element of peppers that makes them spicy is a chemical called capsaicin. This is the main ingredient in pepper spray and can cause issues when used in concentrated amounts. It is literally used as a weapon for self-defense. However, in smaller amounts, capsaicin can help with pain relief, weight loss, and inhibit bacteria growth. And it's that last one, stopping bacteria, that makes capsaicin such an important kitchen addition in ancient times. Here's the basic rundown of microbiology. When food sits out, especially in warmer and humid climates, microbes, what you might know as germs, begin to quickly multiply. This is why we have food safety standards that require restaurants to keep food at a certain temperature. It's also the reason you put your leftovers in the fridge and not on the counter. Because if you ingest enough of these rogue microbes, it has the potential to be deadly. 6,000 years ago, they didn't have the luxury of refrigerators, but they did have chilies. And guess what chilies and capsaicin do? They slow and in some cases even stop microbial growth. Add in garlic, onion, and other delicious antimicrobial spices, and you have a similar antimicrobial effect to a refrigerator. And let's be honest here, it probably took a lot of trial, error, illness, and in some cases funerals of ancient peoples to figure this out. In modern times, we have studies that show those who eat larger amounts of spicy food tend to get sick less often than mild loving friends. Here's what Science News has to say about it. Quote: Before refrigerators, people living in most hot parts of the world developed a taste for spicy foods. Examples include hot Indian curries and fiery Mexican tamales. This preference emerged over time. The people who first added hot peppers to their recipes probably had no idea chilies could make their food safer. They just liked the stuff. But people who ate spicy food tended to get sick less often. In time, these people would be more likely to raise healthy families. This led to populations of hot spice lovers. People who came from cold parts of the world tended to stick to blander recipes. They didn't need those spices to keep their food safe. This is especially evident if you look at a world map. The closer to the equator, and thus the hotter the climate, the spicier the native cuisine. While correlation is not perfectly causation, in this case, there is scientific backing for this circumstance. Those who live farther from the equator in naturally colder climates, think England, Poland, Russia, didn't need capsaicin to preserve their food and stop bacterial growth because they were basically living in freezers. Looking at you, Siberia. Places closer to the equator, like Mexico, India, and West Africa, needed a way to preserve their food. After time, this life-saving preference turned into maidenstays of culture and culinary history. Let's talk some more about that, Capseasin. Have you ever bitten into a spicy pepper and suddenly you're stuck in a vortex of pain, questioning all of your life choices that led you to that point, and find yourself praying for relief? Yeah, me too. It was a ghost pepper and I was young and dumb. That pain that you feel is not actually a taste or a physical burn. It's a protein. No joke. In your cells is a protein called TRPV1. And this protein senses heat. It's a built-in safety mechanism by your brain. When TRPV1 is activated, its job is to send a signal to your brain that says, hey, this silly goose over here is eating dangerous things. You better send the pain. So your brain sends pain to the place affected by the perceived heat where the protein has been activated. There's not actually any physical burning going on, just the perception of pain and burning. This is to keep us from death and is a really clever design feature by ourselves. Eating a ghost pepper has the same effect in your brain as putting your hand to a fire. However, one will actually give you a physical blister while the other is just a sensation of pain. In his research, Tooksberry found that peppers trick our brain into thinking we're being burned, but we're not. It's the ultimate fake out routine to keep humans from eating the plant's prodigious fruit. You know who can eat peppers and not feel like they're getting burned? Birds. Well, birds have TRPV receptors. They function differently than mammalian receptors. The birds get the flavor, but their brains do not sense pain. And this is exactly what the plants want, because birds don't have teeth. Hang with me on this. Mammals like you and I have teeth that will naturally crush seeds. Not great if you're a pepper plant trying to have pepper plant children. Birds, on the other hand, don't crush their seeds, they swallow the seeds whole. The birds then travel away from the mother plant and poop them out in the same way that they came in. This helps the bird and it guarantees the spread of future generation of pepper plant. It's a pretty clever evolution, sadly, for the pepper plant. Humans figured out this trick, that they're not actually getting burned by peppers. The same way we figured out that mint isn't actually cold, it just gives us a cooling sensation when we're exposed to it. There are two sides of the same coin temperature fakeouts. And figure it out, did we ever? In the last 30 years, pepper plant crossbreeding and development have become not just a fun side quest for a niche group of farmers, but a blooming worldwide economy. Pepper consumption, just in the United States, has exploded in the last two decades. Hot sauce companies have seen an even more impressive stage, expanding from novelty bottles for smaller companies in the 90s to now reaching a projected $3.2 billion in the US economy in 2026. That's just hot sauce. We now have shows built around spicy condiments. We have competitions around who can withstand the most and hottest peppers, and we even have full companies whose entire brand is built on creating hotter and hotter peppers. How is the spice of a pepper determined? It's based on the amount of capsaicinoids in the pepper. We call it the Scoville scale, and the spiciness is recorded in Scoville heat units. The scale is actually named after the guy who invented it. You wanted to guess what his name was? Yeah, Scoville. Wilbur Scoville, to be exact. We start with green peppers that have a Scoville rating of zero. This means that there are no capsaicanoids or capsaicin in these peppers. As the amount of capsaicanoids in the pepper increase, that pepper Scoville rating goes up. For example, a banana pepper, the sweet ones like come with your pizza come in at about 100 to 500 Scovils. A jalapeno pepper is around 2,500 to 8,000 Scovils. Once we get past that 8,000 mark, that's when things get to really spice up. A habanero pepper is between 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units. And the hottest pepper on record is the Carolina Reaper and comes in at a whopping 1.4 to 2.2 million Scovils. Here's the important part. The Scoville scale is based on the capsaicinoids in the dried form of the pepper. This is to get a clear reading of the amount as the water content of peppers varies wildly from plant to plant. This is also important to know when using dried spices in your kitchen. The dried spice form of the pepper is much more potent than the plant as the water has been removed. Speaking of your kitchen, what is the best way to combat spice? For decades, the belief has been that if you drink milk after you have something spicy, it will help the pain. The idea being that the casein proteins in the milk will break down the capsaicin. This is great for digestion, but in my experience, it has been far less than even a little bit effective on the tongue and hands. Drinking milk has never helped me when I have spicy food, and I love spicy food. If you get the juices of a pepper on your hands and they are burning, it's actually advised that a little bit of alcohol, rubbing alcohol, or very high-proof drinking alcohol can break down the oils of the capsaicin and relieve the pain, as capsaicin is alcohol soluble. If the burning sensation is in your mouth, making a paste of sugar and water and then swishing it around can help with the pain. The trick here is to spit the sugar paste out. Do not eat it. It will just burn all the way down. The paste is pulling the oils from the pepper off of your skin, and you need to spit it out to get rid of them. If you want something a little more substantial, a spoonful of peanut butter or a bite of avocado can have a similar effect as capsaicin, is lipophilic, meaning it loves fats and it will dissolve into them. Note here that drinking just plain water or washing your hands in water is one of the worst things that you can do when exposed to capsaicin. This is because capsaicin is hydrophobic. It will cling to your skin to avoid the water. If you're going to eat spicy food, find a way to enjoy it and make sure that you are prepared for the pain that may follow. And with that, may your food be delicious and your peppers the right amount of spicy. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this has been Hello from the Van.