Why does spicy food burn on its way in and out?
Eat chilli and you’ll pay twice – once at the table, once on the toilet. But why does it also burn where the sun don’t shine?
All it takes is a pinch too much of that tasty chilli sauce on your momos, or naively ordering a «mild» curry. You’ll be regretting your decision the next morning as the meal makes its exit.
Been there. Done that.
What makes food spicy, anyway?
Spicy food is a masochistic affair. Even though you feel spiciness on your tongue, it’s not actually one of the five basic tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami. Instead, the capsaicin in chillies irritates the heat and pain receptors on your tongue, sending a signal straight to your brain: you’re in pain.
At this point, you should really stop eating. But you carry on anyway – because it makes you happy. The heat receptors send warning signals to your brain, which makes your body sweat while ramping up endorphin release to make the perceived pain bearable. You feel a rush of clarity as your body fights the chilli’s evolutionary defence mechanism meant to protect it against being eaten.
Source: Shutterstock: SabbirDigitall
A further side effect is that the blood vessels in your taste receptors dilate. The heat acts like a flavour enhancer. Your receptors become more sensitive and pick up flavours more intensely.
Alarm in your gut: help, I’m on fire!
The same receptors that put your mouth through hell are also present at the other end. If capsaicin passes through your gut undigested or insufficiently diluted, you’ll feel the pain again as it exits the tunnel. To prevent this, you can eat high-fat foods like cheese, milk or butter during or after your spicy meal; they weaken the fat-soluble capsaicin. Case in point: the lassi. This trick doesn’t work for every fiery meal though, since each plant contains its own heat compounds. Some are fat-soluble, others aren’t (linked article in German).
The good news is, the more often you eat spicy food, the more your receptors get used to the pain stimulus. They stop perceiving the heat as a threat, and the burning stops. That’s bad news if you’re into that chilli-induced heat-sweat: you’ll need to douse your momos with increasingly heroic spoonfuls of the devil’s sauce.
Painting the walls just before handing over the flat? Making your own kimchi? Soldering a broken raclette oven? There's nothing you can't do yourself. Well, perhaps sometimes, but I'll definitely give it a try.
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