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Eating a Naga Jolokia, the hottest chili pepper in the world

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Chili Pepper Naga Jolokia
The Naga Jolokia is a chili pepper found in the Indian subcontinent, a small, red pepper that looks to be nothing more than something you'd buy in a supermarket.

You'd be fiercely wrong, however, as the Naga Jolokia has a Scoville rating of 1 041 000, almost twice as much as the next hottest pepper.


How does the Scoville rating work?

"In Scoville's method, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar syrup until the "heat" is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper or a bell pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable, even undiluted. Conversely, the hottest chilis, such as habaneros, have a rating of 200,000 or more, indicating that their extract has to be diluted 200,000-fold before the capsaicin presence is undetectable. The greatest weakness of the Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because it relies on human subjectivity."

That means the Naga Jolokia pepper has to be diluted more than one million times in order for the burn to disappear, an impressive amount of toxic spiciness.


It's strange that we like hot food, although, I suppose it's strange that we like alcohol, which is also a toxin. I guess we're all a bit masochistic, enjoying the slight pain of a chili pepper - or enjoy the endorphin release after a bout of spicy food.


I remember once I had a jalapeno-eating competition with a friend, and those are weak peppers. By the end, I felt cold and was too shaky to drive home, but I was definitely relaxed, as if I'd had a full injection of morphine.

What would it be like to eat the Naga Jolokia? Well, this sorry fool decides to document the consumption of one pepper, and it looks like it gets on top of him:



Found on Binge Thinker, where one anonymous commenter posted "Good luck on it coming out the other side!"

While it seems like a curiously painful process to go through, there's no shortage of research on the therapeutic effects of spicy compounds, from relief from arthritis to causing tumour cells to 'commit suicide'.

Perhaps a visit to that Mexican restaurant is in order?

*this image is from the Wikipedia page on Naga Jolokia
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Comments
6 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]
1. February 19th 2009 @ 12:04. Janet Collins Says:
I don't think that is a competition I would like to enter really. I think I will explore other avenues.
2. February 19th 2009 @ 22:21. Cibbuano Says:
Janet, you must try them. They're divine!

3. August 13th 2009 @ 22:11. Anonymous Says:
Milk shouldn't work as well as something like say... butter or a vegetable oil.

Capsaicin is fat-soluble, so filling your mouth with a fat should work much better than filling it with something that is mostly water (milk).
4. August 14th 2009 @ 05:26. Fremen Says:
Is it bad that I found that video kind of hilarious?
5. August 20th 2009 @ 16:04. Mathyotter Says:
Not really. It serves him right to suffer for such idiocy.

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