Spain is getting rid of it. With hardly any culture of spicy – we brought the softest peppers from South America – in a few years our kitchen has opened up without fear of a more seasoned seasoning. One of the traditional attractions of capsaicin, the oleoresin responsible for making chili peppers itch and peal, is that it tests our bravery by mercilessly punishing us with its ardor. But there is more: it adds a lot of flavor and, in just the right amount, it is an elixir with multiple healthy properties . According to the latest studies, everything indicates that it lengthens life expectancy and helps prevent certain types of cancer. It is proven that it loses weight , relieves certain pain and makes us happier by causing the release of endorphins .
Increasingly popular in Spain
There is no data on the increase in its consumption in our country, but there are obvious signs. The appearance of new artisan sauces, such as Bastarda and Kema Kulo, is one of them, as well as the organization of extreme spicy contests . In the Thai restaurant Oam Thong, in Madrid, this peak of interest is deduced because the recipe for its spiciest dish, entrecote hell, has had to be tweaked repeatedly. “The public is asking for more,” says its chef and owner Pohai Chiu, who in the latest preparation has included chili peppers of the Carolina reaper variety, the hottest in the world according to The Guinness Book of Records . “I imported them from the United States and had to wait six months for them to be sent to me. You have to get a special permit,” says the chef of Chinese origin. In all fairness, it must be said that the trinidad moruga scorpion red and 7-pot chocolate outnumber it in irritant power. The fourth most intense, the Spanish naga, is grown in Spain. They all exceed one million units on the Scoville scale, which measures pungency.
Chiu defends that his hell is the most tasty, but he also warns: “I have already seen two faints and even Mexicans suffer beautifully. That is why I have a document signed to exempt us from responsibilities. It is an extreme experience: after eating it, you spend a whole day without sleeping . ”As he points out, if there is neither desire nor need to go beyond the limits, the spicy will do the diner good:“ It gets the blood flow activated and the body tunes up ”.
Roberto Ruiz, head of Punto MX in Madrid –the only Mexican with a Michelin star in Europe–, acknowledges that every time they cut less with this ingredient: “I thought it was less liked in Spain. It was a surprise.” He assures that the spiciness is the most difficult to control in his kitchen, because the variety as well as the time of harvest or the degree of insolation on the plant matters. “It is an art; there is a different chili for each recipe and each one bites differently: there are nasal, throat and tongue ones, those that make you sweat under your eyes and those of the xnipec type, which means in Mayan ‘nose dog’s’ (you get wet with irritation) “. The chili, by the way, is the same plant as the pepper, called ají in other parts of South America and, in our country, chilli when it stings in the mouth. The challenge is that you do not notice that it itches. “In Mexico there is always the game of seeing who goes further with an imperturbable face,” says Ruiz. He comes from a country where spicy is still frequently used in deep-rooted traditional medicine : it is worth the same as a flu remedy as as a hair growth or against scorpion bites. Many of its applications were already described in the Aztec and Mayan codices, such as rubbing the gums with the plant to avoid toothache. In addition, it was the first chemical weapon in history: after measuring the direction of the wind, massive burns of chili peppers were made to repel the enemy. Hernán Cortés and his army proved it first-hand as soon as they landed.
In parallel, it has generated a whole culture around it in Mexico. “It is a symbol of masculinity and sexuality,” says Ruiz. “The chili is the penis. If a chili does not sting, it is called joto (homosexual), and if a footballer is good, it is said to be chili.” Likewise, deep traditions persist the prohibition of entering women in some plantations , lest they cast a spell and then have to pray to the sister of the rain god, Tlatlauhqui Cihuatl Ichilzintli, the respectable lady of the red chilito. Prior to gods and men, spicy is a genetic marvel in evolutionary terms. The peppers developed capsaicin to repel herbivorous mammals, which destroy the seeds with their molars. Even more curious is that the spicy does not irritate the birds , which are the ones that disperse the seeds with enough distance between them so that there is no concentration and competition between the plants. With humans, however, they could not, although it has been the species that has most collaborated in its spread. There is evidence of remains of chili peppers in mortars of more than 6,000 years.
The vestiges are distributed everywhere, since this solanaceous, cousin of potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco , adapts to almost any type of soil. However, it flourished more in tropical areas, with greater problems in preserving food, because chili peppers, with a high degree of acidity, have great antibacterial and antiparasitic properties . This explains why, after the western invasion, and its prompt importation to the Iberian Peninsula, in just under two hundred years it became a fundamental condiment of the cuisines of countries such as India and Thailand or the Chinese region of Sichuan, as well as of the Portuguese colonies in Africa. It only needs heat and humidity.
It has also been liked for other reasons. The chef Lalo Plascencia, founder of the Mexican Gastronomic Innovation Center, says that “chili is an abundant source of vitamin C. He saved many Spanish conquerors from scurvy. Along with corn, beans and squash, it forms the basis of the milpa, the traditional Mesoamerican agricultural system “. On the other hand, spiciness predisposes you to enjoy food, since capsaicin acts as a powerful metabolic trigger. “In the face of pain, we react as a defense by salivating profusely, to try to dilute this substance, and that prepares us to better digest food, in addition to having a umami component , the fifth flavor,” says Plascencia.
Due to the activation of the sensation of acidity and heat in pain receptors –nociceptors, of which there is a higher concentration in mucous membranes, corneas and genital organs–, the body also rises in temperature despite the absence of effective damage. The same occurs, although to a lesser degree of suffocation, when ingesting allicin, present in raw garlic and onion, and piperine, incorporated into ginger and black pepper (the Spaniards gave it the name of pepper by affinity with the latter) .
And again as a defense, in this case to alleviate the suffering, we release endorphins , just as it happens after a beating running. So we go from suffering to pleasure in a matter of seconds. “It’s pure masochism,” says Jesús Francisco Rodríguez, director of the José Mataix Verdú Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology, at the University of Granada. Also a madman of spicy and always willing to travel to Mexico to give lectures, he highlights the applications of capsaicin in his field and in other fields of medicine. “It is already used as an analgesic in diseases such as psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis or neuralgia. If it is applied on the epidermis – where the concentration of nociceptors is lower and therefore does not cause the sensation of fire -, it deceives the nervous system, since it makes , due to the prolonged activation of the TRPV1 protein of these receptors, substance P, which participates in the sensation of pain, decreases “. In pharmacies it is possible to find it as a spray and ointment.
Capsules with capsaicin are for sale on the alternative market that is claimed to increase the basal metabolic rate, the energy that the body burns simply by being alive. “It is a miracle therapy, since you would have to gorge yourself to unsuspected limits to achieve such a result,” warns Rodríguez, who is more interested in the anticancer properties of capsaicin. “It produces a strong oxidative stress in the mitochondria of cancer cells, which, in turn, would induce their programmed cell death, a mechanism known as apoptosis. In vitro and epidemiological studies link it”. What the scientist asks is to go further and verify its effectiveness in people when the appropriate doses are known. “It is a very powerful xenobiotic that could be used in chemotherapy to reduce doses and side effects, by having the ability to selectively kill bad cells, and even to prevent some types of cancer: prostate cancer, lung, liver and nervous system “.
However, high intakes of chili peppers are a risk factor for upper gastrointestinal cancer, perhaps due to their irritating effect. A study carried out among the Mexican population by the Department of Gastroenterology of the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition, and published by the Nutrition Journal , shows that frequent consumption of hot sauce is related to ulcerative colitis, by altering the balance of protective mucosa and acid production. But the risk may be worth it if capsaicin is shown to increase life expectancy. Last fall, the British magazine British Medical Journal published a study by the Peking University Center for Health Sciences with the conclusion that people who eat spicy food daily are 14% more likely to live longer than those who ingest it less than once a week. In addition, it was associated with a lower risk of dying from infectious diseases in women and from cancer and respiratory or heart diseases in both sexes, positive effects that are enhanced in abstainers. The antioxidant power and anti-inflammatory action of the spice may be behind these positive effects.
The properties of capsaicin do not end there. In 2012, a team of nutritionists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong discovered in a study with hamsters that it helps break down bad cholesterol , which blocks the blood circulation of the arteries. In addition, it blocks the action of a gene that causes blood vessels to contract. What is more than proven is that it puts the heart and metabolism like a motorcycle , so that the body temperature rises and calories are burned more quickly, pulling the body’s fat stores. There is oxidative stress, which always generates a series of damages in healthy cells that, although they are tolerable and cannot induce other pathologies, must be repaired; And, to achieve this, the cells invest an amount of extra energy that requires consuming more triglycerides. Outcome? We lose weight. The only condition is that you have to feel itchy; otherwise it doesn’t work.
What is not proven, however, is that it has aphrodisiac power. It is only known that there is a greater propensity to consume spicy among individuals with high levels of testosterone. Beyond the realm of love and health, the naga, originating from the northern border between India and Burma, used it as a solvent to strip the skulls of their enemies, which they proudly collected as spoils of war. Today they are content to hold an international intake contest for the bhut jolokia variety each year, also over a million units on the Scoville scale. Chilli peppers are used by farmers in Africa and the Indian subcontinent to defend their crops from elephants: they are smeared on fences to keep them at bay, as pachyderms have a very sensitive sense of smell. Also in Mexico they have created an analogous molecule to mix with paint in order to drive away mollusks from the hulls of ships. The spiciness, combined with the acidic and sweet flavors common in the kitchens of tropical countries, leads us to ask for more. Delicious and healthy addiction.
