disgusting and experienced less emesis. Interestingly, men
reported more emesis than women.^32Some Like it Hot
Sensation-seeking correlates with liking spicy food and even desir-
ing the sting of a spicy meal.^33 Why do some people like the tear-
inducing burn of a spicy meal? Social and cultural factors play
a role. Indeed some countries are known for their spicy sauces.
Additionally, early exposure to spicy foods plays a role in how
much people like hot foods.^34 I’m sure that some people choke
down fiery foods to prove how tough they are. Spicy foods are so
popular that there is even an online calendar, the World Calendar
for Hot Sauce and Chili Festivals that lists over 50 such festivals in
the United States alone; from the Pflugerville Phall Chili Phest to
the National Fiery Foods Show in Albuquerque, New Mexico.^35
What makes spicy foods sizzle? Capsaicin is the active
component in chili peppers and produces a sensation of burning
in pretty much any tissue it comes into contact with. The more
capsaicin, the hotter the pepper. The white membranes of the
pepper contain the most, the seeds, hardly any capsaicin at all.
Despite feeling like your mouth is being destroyed, capsaicin
doesn’t actually cause a burn, but rather interacts with sensory
neurons. The burning sensation is measured on the Scoville
Scale in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). Bell peppers contain no
capsaicin and are rated a 0.
High sensation-seekers like the burn of a meal more than
average and low sensation-seekers. But maybe high sensation-
seekers like spicy food for the sensation itself. In 2016, Nadia
Byrnes and John Hayes of the Sensory Evaluation Center and the
Department of Food Science at Penn State University wanted to find
out more.^36 They concocted a research plan to have people rate how
much they like spicy food. Rather than buying traditional spicy
foods that a person might have a preference for, since someone
might like spicy foods, but not like the taste of jalapenos, for
example, the researchers decided to cook up a spicy strawberry
jelly using food grade capsaicin (you can find the recipe in their
article if you’d like to make it yourself). There were 103 participants
(only 26 men) ranging from 18 to 55 years of age.
The researchers created a soft, flowable demon strawberry
jelly that came in three varieties. Plain with no capsaicin, 2μm63 / The Everyday Life of a High Sensation-SeekerDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:13, subject to the Cambridge