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Scoville Heat Units Are Burning A Hole In This Renovating Your Mind Article

By rkutchjm on March 26, 2013

Pharmacist And Peppers-Hot Combination

The Scoville Scale was originally developed in 1912 by an American pharmacist named Wilbur Lincoln Scoville. It was used to measure the spicy effect of peppers. Called the Organoleptic Test, which means the effect that foods have on sensory organs. He was trying to find a way to come up with a heat-producing lotion. Mr. Wilbur was working at the time for a drug company called Parke Davis in Detroit, Michigan. He played a major role there conducting these tests at what was the first pharmacological research center in the United States.

Nerd Extraordinaire-Wilbur Had The Smarts

Look At The Hair To Compare-Mr. Scoville’s Cartoon Son?

Wilbur’s company needed a way to measure and rate the “hotness” levels of chile peppers. The test measured how many cups of sugar-water was necessary to neutralize the spiciness of the pepper. The higher the number the better chance of choking to death or simply just screaming out in pain.

Scoville Units showed numerically how pungent the pepper was with regards to your taste buds and pain receptors.

Volunteers In Hot Pepper Tasting Really Felt The Bite!!

Since the days of Mr. Scoville (stopped eating peppers forever in 1942), human beings have felt the need to breed hotter and hotter peppers. I don’t understand why. I also don’t understand how anyone in their right mind could eat these embers of hell. They have got to be a little bit touched on the hot side of the brain.

Well, there is a reason and it has to do with the pleasure center of your brain. The active ingredient in all these peppers is called capsaicin. It activates chemicals called endorphins which also gets activated during sex. So I guess the hotter the better. 🙂 I would say reserve a room for you and your ghost pepper!

Let me explain to you how insane this Scoville game is for challengers that are trying to develop an even hotter pepper.

Growers Are Breeding Even Hotter Ones Than Naga Viper

The secret, is enriching the soil with “worm poop”. I never thought about worms pooping. It’s all brown down there anyway so how can you really tell they went? Hot peppers must know because they add about 10% to their potency with the BM from worms.

Recently they have grown what’s known as a “ghost pepper”. Bred in India and having a potency of over 1,000,000 Scovilles. That would take a one million cups of sugar-water to neutralize the heat from this pepper. To one up that, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion was introduced which has a potency of 2,000,000 (2 million Scoville units). If you ever decided to feast on this flaming sun you would need more than 3 ply toilet paper to calm down that exit route. Insane!

Consuming The Higher Numbers Is Synonymous With Lunatic And Vaporizing Taste Buds

There are two current concoctions that are even hotter than Hades. A brand called Psycho Serum by Dr. Burnörium’s Hot Sauce Emporium that delivers 6.4 million (6,400,000) Scovilles. They compare it to “licking the surface of the sun”. There is another made by a New Jersey company called, Blair’s 16 Million Reserve. It consists of the crystallized form of the active ingredient of hot peppers called capsaicin. It has 16,000,000 Scovilles units. Based On Mr. Scoville’s original scale it would take 16 million glasses of sugar-water to neutralize the burning effect. They were awarded the Guinness record and the maximum concentration of Scovilles available at this time. The producing company makes you sign a waiver before you can purchase this product. In the chart above, the capsaicin was not crystallized, therefore strength was only 15 million units.

These higher potency peppers or the crystalline capsaicin is so powerful you must nearly wear a hazmat-like suit when processing this products for sale.

Maybe next we can use battery acid rather than worm poop for fertilizer to ratchet up even further that ever rocketing Scoville number. If Wilbur Scoville was alive today, you think he would enjoy a Bloody Mary made with Blair’s 16 Million Reserve? He would probably find a new profession because rumor was he hated hot peppers.