A little while ago, my family and I ate some takeout for dinner. My mom tried one of the dishes and remarked, “This is really spicy.” However, I had barely felt any sensation of spice when I had eaten a bit of the same dish a few seconds earlier; neither had my sister. My dad thought the dish was spicy, but not as spicy as my mom thought it was.
Because of this occurrence, I pondered the fact that I know people with all manner of spice tolerances; one of my friends can’t even eat jalapeño Cheetos, but another of my friends can eat chili peppers with the seeds still intact. I wondered why this was the case. Thus, I researched this topic and found the following information.
Taste is Actually Flavour
What we usually think of as taste is technically known as “flavour” in scientific terms. For example, when we think, “This food tastes spicy,” it technically does not refer to taste, but flavour.
The scientific term “taste” only refers to sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, and, as scientists have recently begun to believe, fat, also known as “oleogustus”.
Flavour is a different thing altogether. The trigeminal system controls flavour; this system detects sensations in the face and mouth, such as pain, temperature, and touch. Receptors are nerve endings that react to information in one’s environment; the aforementioned types of sensations cause trigeminal receptors, some of which are located on the tongue, to activate. They then create nerve impulses, types of electrical signals; these signals are subsequently transmitted along the head’s main sensory nerve, the trigeminal nerve, to the brain.
So, when someone eats spicy food, it triggers their receptors to send a pain impulse to the brain; this signals that the food the person just ate is spicy.
Capsaicin
Capsaicin Receptors
One chemical compound that can trigger one’s trigeminal receptors is capsaicin; this compound is present in chili peppers. One type of trigeminal receptor, capsaicin receptors, are also known as TRPV1 receptors; they are located on the surface of the taste buds. They react when capsaicin enters their environment; this reaction causes a feeling of pain or a burning sensation on your tongue, which is the feeling that you get when you eat something spicy. These receptors also react similarly to different compounds than capsaicin; the piperine found in black pepper and the isothiocyanates in horseradish and mustard are a few examples of these compounds.
Fewer Capsaicin Receptors Equal Less Sensitivity
One theory states that some people are born with fewer capsaicin receptors than others, so they have higher spice tolerances. This is because eating spicy food causes a lesser amount of capsaicin-induced pain for them.
One woman, Anandita Dutta Tamuly, can even rub chilies on her eyes. She does not feel any pain whatsoever caused by the chilies. Some people speculate that the reason she can do this is because she has no capsaicin receptors. Therefore, she does not feel any pain from spicy foods.
More Exposure to Spice Leads to Less Sensitivity
Eating foods with capsaicin causes a quick release of substance P – a chemical messenger of pain signals – in the brain. However, as one eats more and more foods with capsaicin, it also gradually decreases one’s amounts of substance P; this makes one less sensitive to the burning sensation of capsaicin. Also, frequently consuming capsaicin desensitizes one’s nerves to capsaicin; however, the nerves can still return to their earlier, more sensitive state if one stops eating spicy foods as much and the nerves stop having exposure to capsaicin as often as before.
I really enjoyed learning about the science behind spice, and by reading this blog post, I hope you did too! In the future, I am curious to see if a genetic correlation can be found for spice tolerance.
Thanks for reading!
Gabby Salumbre
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