Whatever you believe and whatever your preferences, if you are one of those people who feels that “spicy” is never quite spicy enough, Hot Sauce Day is the perfect holiday for you!
- In South and Central America, there is evidence for chili peppers being used for cooking as early as 6,000 years ago.
- Chilli Peppers never reached Europe until the 16th century, when Portuguese and Spanish explorers began sending all sorts of unusual foods from the New World back home.
- The first hot sauce to be available in a bottle appeared in shops in the state of Massachusetts in the year 1807, and then suddenly, hot sauce was everywhere, and being added to everything.
- Tabasco sauce is one of the earliest brands to have come into existence that still exists today, being bottled and sold for the first time in 1868.
- Ever wondered why hot sauce is so addictive? Eating chilis and hot sauce causes your body to release endorphins (the brain’s ‘feel good’ chemical). This is because capsaicin (the stuff that makes chilis hot) irritates the nose, mouth and stomach. Your body reacts by releasing endorphins, a natural painkiller that your body produces.
- A little bit of cool general knowledge: that sweaty reaction you get when indulging in hot sauce is called gustatory perspiration.
- The scoville scale, which measures how hot your hot sauce is, is named after Wilbur Scoville, the man who developed this scale.
- Mexico grows an incredible 140 varieties of chilies
- Generally, the smaller the chili, the hotter it is.
- Many people experience an aphrodisiac-like effect when eating hot peppers.
- A scientific journal recently reported that drinking 1-1/2 quarts of Louisiana hot sauce, if you weigh 140 pounds or less, will cause death by respiratory failure.
- In 1493 Christopher Columbus discovered chile peppers in America.
- Ounce for ounce, chilies have more vitamin C than oranges.
- One out of every four people throughout the world eat chile peppers daily.
- Two of the founding fathers of our country, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, are both known to have grown chile peppers.
- Chili peppers are one of the most widely used ingredients in massage oils and even topical pain relievers. Chilis are so versatile that they have been known to help with acne and even in anti-cellulite creams.
- The Guinness Book of World Records crowned the Carolina Reaper the ‘hottest pepper in the world’ in 2013. It was cultivated by Ed Currie in South Carolina and averages more than 1.5 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU) on the Scoville scale — the measurement used to determine a pepper’s heat. A Jalapeño pepper, for reference, is between 3,500–10,000 SHU.
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