Do Your Mouth A Favor And Stop Drinking Water To Rid Of Pepper's Spicy Flavor

by N/A, 10 years ago | 2 min read

If you've seen these Twin Brothers chow on 130 of the world's hottest peppers, or you watched these two dummies down a Carolina reaper (the world's hottest chili pepper), you know that peppers can pack a fiery fist to the face. However, there's no reason to not indulge in the deliciousness, you just need to know how to combat the heat. The short answer is: water does NOT help. Now, if you're anything like the me, you don't want the spiciness to stop, but others may need to know how to end it.

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So, pick your poison: all have peppers as their base ingredient for that spicy factor.

A spicy factor which can be determined on something known as the Scoville Scale. Basically, this scale determines things on a level of mild to Holy-Hell my mouth is on fire and I think I'm going to die! That's all you really need to know about that.

The way spiciness can be determined is by a little thing known as capsaicin. It binds to the TRPV1 receptors in your mouth with send neural signals to the brain in the form of something like, "WOW: That's hot, why did you eat that?!"

Capsaicin is what makes your mind start to freak out, or challenge your body to eat more spiciness and really get things heated up. You begin to sweat, mouth waters and tears may even flow, and it's all because of the capsaicin. That's the short of it, but how can you get rid of it if it becomes too much to handle?

Well, like we said earlier, water is NOT the answer. Water just spreads capsaicin around your mouth, and essentially amplifies the spicy factor. That's why you need milk.

Milk contains non-polar molecules that dissolve the capsaicin in your mouth and washes them out. That is the only way to combat spiciness, again, if you want to. If you're a daring diner such as myself, you enjoy relishing in the pepper's flame.

That was the gist of it, but let the minds over at Reactions walk you through everything you need to know about how to practice safe peppers.

Hopefully they were able to answer all your sizzling questions about the burning sensation of eating a jalapeño or other tear-inducing pepper. If you're crazy like me, you'll ignore all of this information and just keep ramping up the heat, but that's up to you.