About five years ago, reports surfaced of an East Indian chile pepper that was trumpeted as the hottest in the world -- twice as hot as the Red Savina pepper, which held the Guinness title at the time.
This intrigued Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University. He noted that no one had verified how hot this little chile pepper really was -- and decided to find out for himself.
In 2001, Bosland managed to obtain seeds of the mystery pepper from a colleague who had recently returned from India. It took four years to grow enough peppers for testing, but Bosland's efforts paid off. In 2005, his lab confirmed that the Bhut Jolokia pepper did, indeed, have the highest heat ever recorded. This past February, Bhut Jolokia was crowned by Guinness as the "hottest of all spices."
The chemical that gives peppers their bite, capsaicin, is found only in chile peppers. Interestingly, birds cannot detect the chemical, a tweak of evolution that helps ensure the pepper's survival. If the pepper's seeds are consumed by mammals, they are crushed and rendered infertile. But because of their bite, most mammals avoid them.
Birds, on the other hand, readily eat peppers. And, unlike mammals, they release the seeds from their digestive tracts intact -- conveniently packaged with a dose of natural fertilizer.
The most well-known work on capsaicin was done in the early 1900s by Wilbur Scoville, a chemist who developed the Scoville scale, a measure still in use today that expresses the heat in peppers.
Bell peppers contain no capsaicin and have a zero rating on the Scoville scale.
Jalapenos come in at about 5,000 Scoville Heat Units, habaneros at about 300,000.
But these pale in comparison to the Bhut Jolokia -- which has a confirmed Scoville rating of more than a million units.
For many of us, the heat of the pepper is what makes it such a palate pleaser. But peppers also have a lot going for them nutritionally -- they are good sources of vitamin C, beta carotene, folic acid, magnesium and potassium. Peppers and capsaicin also have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, which might reduce the risk of heart disease, certain cancers and other chronic diseases that occur with age.
Chile-laden meals have been shown to boost energy expenditure in several human trials. In one study, for instance, 10 grams of dried hot pepper added to breakfast increased energy expenditure by 23% immediately after the meal and for more than two hours afterward.
