Bite me, Bambi!

Or, How Eating Habanero Peppers Proves I’m Smarter Than Other Mammals.

It’s chili pepper harvesting time again! While most Chicagoans seem enamored with growing tomato plants, I think habanero peppers should be the crop of choice. OK, to be honest, I’m actually too lazy to grow my own, but I have a couple of friends and a neighbor who go through the effort and I reap the rewards. I added the first batch of habaneros to my home-made enchiladas a couple of days ago and am still savoring the thought.

The New York Times science section has a fascinating article about why so many humans love hot peppers. Theories about why we like certain foods often involve evolutionary motivations for good health. In the case of hot peppers it has been suggested that by reducing blood pressure, and even providing some level of pain reduction, we evolved not just a tolerance, but a liking for hot peppers. The problem with this theory is that humans are the only mammals who seek out hot peppers to eat. Birds eat them, but they don’t have the same neurological receptors to feel the heat, so to them hot peppers are just another fruit.

If eating the hot peppers gave us an evolutionary advantage other mammals would also have developed a yen for them, perhaps well before homo sapiens split from our common ancestors. Yet even our closest relatives shun the noble jalapeno or habanero.

My son was quite impressed with an in-law who grew up in Mexico and ate habanero peppers whole, so my wife suggested a father-son gardening project. The first year only one plant survived the woodchucks and deer. But what a plant — it produced a bumper crop of killer orange habaneros. Nothing ate them. In my mind I still see that plant dangling its little orange heat grenades in front of the deer and growling, “Bite me, Bambi.”

Dr. Paul Bloom, a psychologist from Yale, sees our love of hot peppers as a unique outgrowth of our abnormally large human brains. He thinks that, perhaps, it’s a form of dietary thrill seeking.

The fact that capsaicin causes pain to mammals seems to be accidental. There’s no evolutionary percentage in preventing animals from eating the peppers, which fall off the plant when ripe. Birds, which also eat fruits, don’t have the same biochemical pain pathway, so they don’t suffer at all from capsaicin. But in mammals it stimulates the very same pain receptors that respond to actual heat. Chili pungency is not technically a taste; it is the sensation of burning, mediated by the same mechanism that would let you know that someone had set your tongue on fire.

The lizard portion of our brain gets the signals that our mouth is on fire and tells us to stop eating right now! The more evolved, logic and reasoning part of our brain tells us that it’s alright to continue. Logic an reasoning prevail, and we take another bite, thrilled that we survived the first. Being a good scientist, Dr. Bloom has been experimenting to test his theory and so far results have been encouraging.

It’s amazing that a love of hot spicy food is one of the indicators of higher intelligence in a species.