Neat little blurb from the Saanich News out of British Columbia featuring chile peppers. Who knew those Canucks have so much accumulated knowledge about chiles?
Hot peppers began in the Americas
By Pam
Tempelmayr
May 11 2007In Bloom
When the Incas met the Europeans in battle, they burned giant piles of rocote chilies. In Mexico, natives threw calabashes of smouldering habañeros over Columbus’s fortress walls to try to drive out the foreign devils.
Ancient Panamanians on the other hand strung peppers on their canoe prows to discourage sharks while Mayans disciplined children by holding them over smoldering jalapeños.
If you’re looking for a natural high look no farther than your cayenne pepper shaker or any of the hot chili peppers, especially the aforementioned habañero variety. Despite the hundreds of varieties of peppers, there are only two species of the genus Capsicum; Capsicum annuum includes cayenne, chilies, bell peppers and Capsicum frutescens is the pepper used to make Tabasco sauce. All these peppers contain a tasteless chemical called capsaicin, which is responsible for the heat; it’s so powerful that one part in 11 million causes a sizzle. Our body’s first reaction when eating this chemical is a burst of adrenaline (this is why Peru banned hot pepper sauce in their prisons). Next, we produce endorphins to dull body pain. Yet here is the catch: the pain is an illusion as the sensation of heat is actually caused because our nerve endings are depleted of something called substance P. The endorphins produce a quasi-narcotic bliss. Cayenne contains more capsaicin than any of the other peppers. Capsicums are not related to black table pepper, which are the dried berries of the Piper nigrum vine.
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Joe, are you going to straighten these folks out? Which do habs belong to, annuum or frutescens?
Comment fired by CaJohn — May 11, 2007- 11:49 pm
Well, yeah…they sorta missed out on Capsicum chinense, which only has some of the hottest peppers on the planet in it. Partial credit is given for at least getting some of the info right, and some of the historical stuff was interesting.
Comment fired by Joe & Linda — May 12, 2007- 10:04 am
I’m more than just a lot embarrassed that the writer of this article is Canadian… Where did the article come from. I have a good mind to tell her off.
Tina
Comment fired by Tina — May 18, 2007- 7:02 pm
Consider her set straight… I sent the following comment:
As a chili research specialist and a regular writer for the Hot Zone Online Blog, I am more than a little surprised that the errors in this article were let out to the world as if they were factual. Unfortunately, because of a wire feed, it has been published on our blog: http://www.thehotzoneonline.com So, I feel obliged to write to set the record straight.
To begin with, the word Habanero does not take a tilde.
Secondly there are many more species of the genus Capsicum than just the annuum and the frutescens, there are also C. baccatum, C. cardinasii, C. chacoense, C. chinense, C. ciliatum, C. eximium, C. flexuosum, C. galapagoense, C. praetermissum, C. pubescens and C. Tovarii, and those are just the known ones.
For the record, habanero are part of the group C. Chinense and habanero contain more capsaicin than cayennes, as do many other species of chillies, including the new Guinness Book of World’s Records holder, the Bhut Jolokia.
Yours,
Tina Brooks, VP Marketing
Brooks Pepperfire Foods
http://www.peppermaster.com
Comment fired by Tina — May 18, 2007- 7:24 pm