Why do we "enjoy" when eating spicy even though it's not good?

Hot and spicy food is the joy of many people. Needless to say, spicy noodles are extremely popular in Vietnam every day, making people cry, sobbing, speechless, their stomachs burning, but then they feel satisfied and hungry. Why is that?

Because eating spicy makes us afraid, painful but happy

According to many studies, people like to eat spicy food because of their addiction to capsaicin - the substance contained in chili peppers - a common ingredient that creates the spicy taste. This substance heats the oral cavity and tongue, so it inherently helps it live safely from animals. The fact that we suffer from burning mouth, swollen lips, stomach pain when eating spicy, researchers call "chili pain".

Obviously, we are very honored to have chili, pepper... hurt! Explaining this paradoxical phenomenon, Paul Rozin (a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania) has done many studies and come to the conclusion: We are addicted to spicy food because of the coordination of activities between the two nervous systems. pleasure and feel pain.

People like spicy food because they feel the pain but it is not life-threatening, and then they feel relief when the pain is gone. These two nerves also affect dopamine (the hormone that brings feelings of excitement and satisfaction), which explains why we feel euphoric when we eat spicy food. When the spicy is gone, the amount of dopamine also decreases and to find that happy feeling again, one of the solutions is that we will eat spicy again when the opportunity arises.

This feeling is like riding a roller coaster, bungee jumping, watching horror movies - find the challenge (it seems dangerous), experience and overcome it to find pleasure. For animals, eating chili is a form of mortification, a dangerous challenge to pleasure

Rozin hypothesizes that taste also has a rather unexpected affective function: Comfort. In 2011, a study led by neuroscientist Siri Leknes at the University of Oxford looked for the relationship between enjoyment and entertainment. Research tries to find out if these 2 feelings always occur together. In the experiment, Dr. Leknes made 18 volunteers do two things, pleasant and unpleasant, and then scanned their brain activity.

This theory often appears in Korean movies - where the characters often invite each other to eat spicy pork, spicy rice cakes, to relieve stress.

In the "pleasant task," they were asked to recollect good memories, including the food they liked and the fresh taste of the sea. On the contrary, during the unpleasant task, the volunteers would receive signals of impending danger, and soon after, a beam with 120 degrees of heat would be directed at their left arm for 5 minutes. seconds, not enough to hurt but it will be very painful.

Brain scans show that both pleasure and pleasure activate the same area of the brain in the anterior lobe. This is where perceptions and judgments are formed and very close to hedonistic hotspots. In addition, the researchers also found that the intensity of emotions depends on many factors, including attitude towards life. The volunteers had a more pessimistic outlook on life, and their brains produced relief with greater intensity, possibly because they thought the pain wouldn't end.

Some theories suggest that we like spicy food because of our innate love for heat. The heat of chili, pepper... recreates the warm feeling of the fire - one of the great friends of man in the early days.

For the sake of culture

Along with that, cultural influences also play an important role. Many people have the opportunity to access and enjoy hot and spicy foods regularly from a young age, so they soon form a habit of eating spicy. The famous countries with "spicy" cuisine are Korea, Thailand, India...

The feeling of being a little scared but excited and joyful that eating spicy brings makes people unable to stop thinking about it. Once they have eaten spicy, people tend to depend on chili, pepper, and spicy spices more because they think "spicy is delicious". That spicy taste may be the result of dopamine - the pleasure the body releases when it suffers from the pain of chili peppers.

Therefore, even though eating spicy food too often or eating too spicy can easily cause stomach ulcers, stimulate sweat glands, make the skin oily and easy to collect dust, cause bad breath, heartburn... but people still eat spicy food in a way. full of passion.

Did humans evolve to get used to hot, spicy things?

For centuries, people have been "eager" to use chili as an emotional spice in meals. Some people are addicted to it and they will not eat well if the meal lacks chili. In fact, these people were addicted to capsaicin, the substance found inside chili peppers, which creates a feeling of heat when ingested. A paradox is that nature has endowed capsaicin with the function of warding off animals, including humans, who eat it, yet humans still intentionally consume this fruit.

The feeling of eating chili is similar to how people feel about cold food. The cold can be uncomfortable for the skin but on the contrary, we also love to drink cold drinks and especially eat ice cream. Maybe, we also evolved to love the coolness and use it to quench our thirst. However, everything must have a deeper cause and the above arguments are still not enough to explain the original question.

Since the 1970s, Paul Rozin, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, has begun to conduct research to explain why people love spicy foods. He went to the village of Oaxaca, Southern Mexico to investigate to find out the difference between humans and animals. The inhabitants of this region especially like very spicy foods. So do their pigs or dogs like this taste?

Professor Rozin said: "I asked people in the area if they knew any animals that also like to eat hot pepper. They said the question was funny. They said: There are no animals. No animal likes to eat pepper." Not believing the words of the indigenous people, Rozin performed an experiment to prove it. He gave the pigs and dogs two choices: a non-spicy cheesecake and another cookie, drenched in a spicy sauce. The results showed that they ate both pieces of cake, but always chose the non-spicy cake to eat first.

Experiment "force mice to like spicy food"

After that, Professor Rozin performed another experiment, trying to get the rats to get used to the spicy taste of chili peppers. If he could help rats prefer spicy foods to bland ones, it could be inferred that the presence of hotness in food is simply a matter of adaptation. Professor Rozin exposed one group of mice to spicy foods from birth, and another group of mice that were added gradually over the course of their development. Both groups continued to prefer non-spicy foods.

Then, he increased the rats to eat non-spicy food mixed with chemicals to make them sick to make them afraid of non-spicy foods. However, both groups of rats continued to prefer non-spicy foods. Continuing the experimental process, he also caused vitamin B deficiency in some mice, causing them to suffer from cardiovascular, lung and muscle diseases, ... and next, he treated them with spicy foods mixed with drugs. That might reduce, but not completely, eliminate the rats' aversion to spicy foods. In the end, only the mice that had lost their ability to perceive spicy taste lost their hatred for chili peppers. Therefore, Professor Rozin concludes that the love of spicy is unique to humans and may be caused by cultural or psychological problems.

Not long after, Professor Rozin compared a group of Americans (who had a low-spicy diet) with the tastes of villagers in Mexico. He fed each group a variety of corn-based snacks, but with varying degrees of spiciness. He then asked them to rate the taste of each level of spiciness, from optimal to unpleasant. True to early predictions, Mexicans consume spicy taste better than Americans. But for both groups, the difference between "moderate" and "unpleasantly spicy" was not high. Professor Rozin said: "The highest level of spiciness that people feel comfortable with is not far from the level of irritating spicy. This has led me to think that it is humans who push the limits of their tolerance to the heat. hurts."

In the human brain, feelings of liking and disliking are often closely related, overlapping each other. Both sensations are reflexes of ancient origin and act on nerves in the brain. Both act on dopamine agents in neurons, helping to shape motivation and satisfaction. They will intensely activate areas of the cerebral cortex to influence perception and consciousness.

Anatomists also think that the two systems are closely related: In some brain structures, the neurons responsible for responding to pain and pleasure are located in close proximity. This has formed a gradient from positive to negative. Furthermore, much of this gradient is also very close to the pleasure hotspot, an area activated by endorphins (caused by stress), which makes people happier.

According to Guinness World Records, the hottest chili pepper in the world is the Carolina Reaper, developed in recent years by Ed Currie. He created a website that posted videos of people eating chili peppers and at the same time, conducted research on torture. When a man tries to eat chili, his eyes will widen in astonishment, followed by a series of reactions such as sweating, runny nose and probably a burning sensation. can describe.

However, those scary feelings are invisible in general, a relief only found in humans. They try to endure it, overcome it and finally feel the results because they have overcome it. Finally, if you like to eat chili, you should also be proud because it is a way of self-stimulation that only humans and higher beings have.

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