Whenever my mother buys any vegetable from the market, she always gets a handful of green chillies before leaving. “Thori se halki waali mirach bhi de dena” (Do put in a few less spicy chillies as well) she says.

These ‘less spicy’ ones are usually for me, while my brother goes for the extremely fiery ones. If we are not poles apart, we are quite distant when it comes to choosing chillies on the basis of their spiciness. The Ghotki variant of chillies available here in Karachi seems spicier to me, while I can tolerate most other common ones.

Chillies can be as mild as green bell peppers, which may even be eaten raw in salads and Italian food by children, and can be so spicy that they can even cause health concerns and discomforts such as severe heartburn, abdominal discomfort and stomach pain in adults, if consumed in the wrong quantities. When cooked without checking, it can heat up your meals bmanifold, rendering them inedible for your family.

Why are the peppers or chillies so hot to taste?

Chillies contain a chemical compound called capsaicin. These chemicals themselves are not fiery, but they have a unique property. When we eat chillies, the capsaicinoids bind to the heat-regulating receptors that are present on our tongue and mouth. When this chemical binds to these heat and pain receptors, it gives us that fiery taste sensation that is characteristic of peppers and chillies.

Although scales can measure the heat level of various peppers and chillies, a person’s tolerance to the spice is subjective

Since this heat comes from a chemical and not a tastant (a substance that produces a taste sensation by activating taste receptor cells) many researchers do not even consider pepper to have a taste at all.

Usually, the spicier-tasting pepper or commercially available food would rather be considered hot, hotter, very hot or hottest, basing their classification of the spiciness of the food on the level of capsacinoids and the heat it may be able to generate within the mouth.

Globally, with such a broad range of spice levels among peppers and chillies, it was only inevitable that a scale would be developed that could categorise the chillies and peppers based on their spice level.

A scale was developed in 1912 that placed the chillies and peppers in order on the basis of the amount of capsaicin compound within and the sensation of heat that one may detect from consuming them. The scale came to be known as the Scoville scale, named after its inventor, pharmacologist Wilbur Scoville.

The workings of the scale were simple. It would extract the amount of capsaicin compound within the pepper and mix it with water and sugar until the solution was neutral (i.e. not spicy) to taste. A higher concentration of capsaicin would require higher water and sugar dilutions and eventually would be rated higher on the heat index. T

The unit of the Scoville scale gauging how hot a pepper is known as the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU).

The heat calculation of all the chillies and peppers is done on this scale. On one end, it begins at zero SHU with the bell pepper, locally known as Shimla mirch. On the other extreme of the Scoville scale lies Pepper X, with a heat value of more than 3 million SHUs.

All the different varieties of pepper lie within these two extremes. Although tolerance to the spice and heat of peppers is subjective, but it is still the closest scale to streamline and quantify the heat in peppers.

From spicy foods to condiments, and from peppers and chillies to anything prepared using these, all of these can now be given a number or level of spice that they may contain. So far, it has also paved the way for more of the spicier chilli- and pepper-eating tournaments as well.

Chilli and peppers have both sets of health benefits and minor health concerns as well. These are one of the most common garnishing materials and are eaten alongside almost all meals globally. Chillies are also grown by farmers with overlapping features through cross-pollination.

The pepper’s heat, colour and size would be modified as per liking to develop new variants of chillies. Due to certain myths, however, many locals are circumspect about growing chillies at home.

In future articles, I will share the health benefits of consuming peppers and how you can easily grow different varieties of chillies and peppers at home.

Please send your queries and emails to doctree101@hotmail.com. The writer is a physician and a host for the YouTube channel ‘DocTree Gardening’ promoting organic kitchen gardening

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 5th, 2023