I can’t believe old el paso is willing to spend the money it would take to actually make a less spicy variation. This is probably just the same thing called just “mild” in other markets.
That is so funny. I do have an ex mother out-law who cannot eat onion because she says it’s too spicy. She is somehow still a good cook.
I really like spicy food. Don’t need everything to be spicy but I like the spicy stuff to be very spicy.
Totally anecdotal, but I once got an Indian brand ramen cup (marketed for the UK) from a UK emporium that was advertised as hot and spicy. I used LESS water than I was supposed to and added the entire contents, and it was still milder than most medium salsas around here. It was most likely just a crap brand of cheap products but I still remember my reaction being ‘really?’
Funny enough, if you go to local Mexican restaurants that make their own salsa daily the person making the salsa also changes near daily. And one person’s mild is another person’s w e a k so sometimes you dip that first chip and go WOAH, nice
That seems weird. All the people I know from the UK are into flaming hot Indian food so I can’t imagine they would have a problem with mild salsa. And I have yet to see an Aussie fridge that doesn’t have multiple bottles of extra hot sauces. I consider myself to be a wimp with hot spice - my stomach and I disagree on the matter and it wins - but even I can handle “mild”. Not that I believe people don’t exist (I know one or two), but that there would be enough population to make it a worthwhile sales change surprises me.
Please don’t post ads.
I love spicy food, but my mum can’t even handle black pepper. Lol. Lmao even
This is because “Spice” is not a flavour. It’s a specific sensation of pain.
A. Yes, there are definitely people here in the UK who can’t handle anything spicier than gravy.
B. They’re in the minority.
C. I refuse to believe you don’t know someone like that, no matter where you’re from.
I refuse to believe you don’t know someone like that, no matter where you’re from.
And quite right. I had a friend who’d get the sweats eating sour candies and couldn’t do anything even remotely chili.
I legitimately can’t tell the difference between their mildest and hottest. It’s like 0.3% vs. 0.4% hot.
I know someone who can’t stand spicy food at all. The other day a bunch of us ordered some Thai food and I thought the Penang curry I got was mild enough for her because I literally couldn’t tell if there was any spice in it. There were definitely some nice flavours, but no bite that I could detect at all. It was still too spicy for her.
I find this to be the case for most “spicy” things targeting a western market. Firehouse Subs has a hot sauce bar where they rate the spiciness from 1 to 10. Normally I don’t bother with it because the ones at the higher end tend to either be some spicy vinegar variation (ugh no thx), or pineapple based, which I’m usually not in the mood for.
Last time they had an 8 that wasn’t either of those so I asked them to add a line to my sub as they made it.
It’s like their 10 was targeted at jalapeno spiciness, maybe cayenne. The 8 did add some heat, but it was where I’d call it a medium, and a mild one at that.
Should use a logarithmic scale I guess. Just frustrating that spicy stuff always seems to be marketed for people who don’t really like spice. The less generous side of me thinks it has to do with people wanting to act tough but are actually whiny losers who thinks it’s the seller’s fault they can’t handle the heat they wanted to show off handling.
I really wish that “10” would be equivalent to the hottest thing you could eat (and “0” being tap water).
For me, that was a hot sauce that caused my fingertips to go numb for several hours because I wasn’t wearing gloves. He chef told me that a few had been hospitalized from it.
Hence, old El Paso being 0.04 on a linear scale to 10.
Whatever scale we use, I just wish it was consistent instead of everywhere having their own scale with no calibration until you try it, further complicated by your spice tolerance itself varying over time, so you constantly need to recalibrate on any scale that isn’t just “hottest they have still isn’t hot at all”.
True, I suspect that the lack of properly spicy options from major/national food establishments has to do with fear of litigation, or risk management for customers who want to be macho but can’t eat the food and ultimately request refunds. Taco Bell had previously come out with a ghost pepper sauce that, while not “hot” compared to the actual pepper, it did have a noticeable heat profile compared to, say, “fire” which IMHO has good flavor but is has a slightly noticeable heat profile at best.
And then there’s Denmark (iirc) that outright banned some of the Buldak ramen flavours for being too spicy. The 2x spicy chicken is pretty spicy, like “I’m going to power through this to not waste any food” spicy, but I lost respect for Denmark’s leadership when I saw that.
Btw, at the risk of making it even harder to find, Buldak’s spicy curry chicken flavour is amazing. The cheese one is decent, too.
Ooh, I’ll have to try the curry chicken - it looks delicious! Same with the yakisoba! I think the only Buldak flavors I’ve tried so far are cheddar and carbonara.
Make sure to read the directions, as they aren’t prepared like a typical ramen soup. You drain it after boiling the noodles and then fry them in the sauce, improving the flavour and texture (or your frying skills if you don’t get it right lol).
And my secret improvement (other than adding things like eggs and shrimp): ramen wraps. Something about the combo of textures makes me love this, and since these ramen aren’t soup-based the wrap ends up less messy.
Probably has to do with vitamin D status/availability of people who live closer to the poles: https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP279961
Basically capsaicin can bind to similar spots as vitamin D, and if you have relatively low vitamin d, that can lower it further temporarily.
Please note that this is regardless of race. I can’t edit any of my comments anymore for some reason on amy instance so I wasn’t able to add that in to emphasize this isn’t racial.
Why wouldn’t it be? Darker skinned people have a hard time with northern winters due to the lack of sunlight. Read an article when I lived in Chicago about how many black women were diagnosed and lacking vitamin D.
According to a dermatologist pricing in the Caribbean, most of the people living there have Vitamin D deficiency as well.
When it’s hot and sunny all year round most people just avoid the sun all the time.
In Australia they stopped publically funding vitamin D blood testing because it just KEPT returning deficient. Basically everyone here needs to supplement Vit D. Well applied sunscreen blocks vitamin D absorption by like, 95%.
Because race isn’t genetic and isn’t scientific. It should competely be removed from the sciences entirely.
Twins with same dad and mom can be different races.
People who have no relation can have the same skin tone and can be labeled as the same race by someone looking at them.
If there are specific genes or biochemicals causing different vitamin status in people, that is not racial, that is genetic and environmental. They need to cite those specific genes or biochemicals to actually conduct proper science. If the mechanism is melanin, then that needs to be properly described as melanin and not race- there are people who racially are black with no melanin - albinism.
Everyone living at the poles has lowered vitamin d status and elevated vitamin A status, that’s why you can’t eat livers of polar animals or you’ll die like those explorers who ate husky liver.
Vitamin D daily amount is super super easy to get, something like 5-15minutes standing outside is all you need. People do more than that when they walk to their car. The reason their vitamin D is low is often due to needing other vitamins and nutrients that work with it. Vitamin D status is closely related to other fat soluble vitamin status (vitamin k, e) and B vitamins and many other things, not just accessibility to sunlight or dairy or melanin content of the skin.
Additionally melanin content of the skin can change a little over time, including with most metal supplementations like copper, iron, and zinc - that’s why zinc and copper deficiencies are associated with vitiligo and why giving vitiligo patients zinc can help treat the condition. It’s also why skin bleaching works biochemically. It’s why you can tan.
What you eat and do affects your melanin content, but it certainly would not change someone’s race, because race is an arbitrary grouping of features that includes skin color from various genetic and biological causes, meant to enforce roles and class onto people.
So no, it isn’t racial, it is related to vitamin D status.
Vitamin D daily amount is super super easy to get, something like 5-15minutes standing outside is all you need.
True it’s like 80% of daily vitamin D intake in 15 minutes even when you’re only showing like 20% skin.
But sometimes that be harder than you’d think. There’s no direct sunlight to my apartment, at any point of the year. Despite these apartment complexes being called “Sun Valley” lol. I supplement vitamin D in the winters though. Have to. I’m not always awake during the few hours the sun is up and even when it is often there’s heavy cloud coverage.
If you do supplement vitamin D though, remember to do it in the morning rather than evening, as it’s basically an antidote to melatonin, so to avoid fucking up circadian rhythm (or to create a new one) melatonin at night and vitamin d in the morning.
Yeah again if you aren’t absorbing adequate vitamin D from being outside, it is probably more related to other vitamin deficiencies, often vitamins k and e. That’s why for years there were no known health benefits of supplementing vitamin d, until it got paired with vitamin k - your vitamin d supplements you take literally have vitamin k in them for this reason.
It is actually a better idea to take it midday or later in the day, but paired with other fat soluble vitamins and calcium, and this is intuitive that your max vitamin D status naturally would be at the end of the day once you’ve eaten and been in the sun all day.
You would never wake up full of vitamin D, the premise doesn’t make sense.
Melatonin and vitamin D have a complex relationship with calcium and serotonin and other biological pathways. I wouldn’t call one an “antidote” to the other because they are synergistic.
It’s not just because they’re synergistic.
I say “morning” but 11-14 is basically my morning and I’m in Northern Europe. But yeah, probably best to take it dawn than dusk. And research seems to agree.
During natural day–night rhythms, serum vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) increases rapidly as a result of UVB exposure [32], which occurs mostly between 11:00 and 15:00 h at higher latitudes (Europe, USA) since UVB is largely absent before and after these times due to the large solar zenith angle [9]. Also after supplement intake, serum cholecalciferol starts rising in a similar (rapid) fashion as after UVB exposure [32]. It is not unlikely that increases in cholecalciferol levels during the time window in which UVB exposure naturally occurs is most optimal for subsequent processing of vitamin D metabolites in the liver and kidneys. Especially because organ metabolism (i.e., nutrient uptake and processing in the liver and kidneys) is also regulated by circadian clocks.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079220301222
But yeah “antidote” is hyperbole, my bad. “Further study is needed.”
That isn’t dawn. No one should take vitamin D at dawn or when they first wake up. They should take it later in the day. Not at dusk either.
*cant eat livers of polar predators, not animals. It’s generally ok to eat lovers of animals like caribou
ok to eat lovers of animals like caribou
Dude. It is most certainly not okay to eat people who love caribou.
But yeah you’re right. But also up North where the polar bears live vitamin toxicity might not be your only issue. Protein poisoning could be an issue, if you didn’t have access to any carbs or fat (caribou, or reindeer as we like to call them, are suuuuper lean usually).
Also known as “rabbit starvation.”
Rabbit starvation, also known as protein poisoning, mal de caribou, and rabbit malaise, is a form of malnutrition that arises when someone eats protein with too little energy from carbs or fat for too long.
Are you telling me people with dark skin have equivalent vitamin D production, given the same sun exposure, as people with white skin?!
Read what I wrote again.
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(CAN’T EDIT)
Meant to say, “Why couldn’t it be?”
I like spicy food but even mild spice plays up with my stomach and a while after eating some I could shit through the eye of a donut at thirty yards. So I really appreciate things that are meant to be spicy but have an option where they’re not so that I can experience a bit of what I can no longer have.
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You can tell an American made this meme.
The UK is actually generally fine with spicy food, but my relatives in Poland could barely handle mildly spicy food, so yeah
I took my Polish sales rep to eat Ethiopian with me about a month ago, dude loved it, even put extra mitmita on his kitfo ^~which I suddenly realize to anyone who doesn’t know about Ethiopian food that’s gonna sound pretty weird…~^
Not weird at all, but of course I just translated this into some weird sexual act you guys were participating in.
Now I want Doro wat 😭
What not having any5hing spicy grow in a place naturally does to cusine.
I read once that spicy cuisine doesn’t correlate almost at all with where the spices are native, it correlates with where temperatures cause food spoilage. The theory is that, since chilis, garlic, and onions have some antimicrobial and antibiotic effect, the people who cooked with them in warmer climates tended to survive better than people who didn’t, and so passed down their tastes for them more. I read that a bunch of years ago, not sure if it’s been confirmed or disproved.
