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These two papers give a much better answer than this blog: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138904172... (why do humans increase their chili consumption) and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8042654/ (antibacterial + disease-alleviating properties of capsaicin).

Besides the fact that capsaicin has antibacterial effects and exerts indirect disease-alleviating effects during bacterial infections (something our ancestors had to deal with a lot), eating chili triggers an endorphin high, but regularly eating chili makes you less sensitive and hence you have to eat more chili to get your little high. Taken together, these two properties of chili most likely have been the main drivers of it being adopted as a staple food in many cultures.

I’ve gotten to a point where I prefer to drink a hot spicy soup in a cup over many things. If I drink coffee, it also always burning hot with a solid mix of cream, sugar and cinnamon. One of the things it helps me achieve is a small warmth that also helps me sleep.

I don’t even resort to hot sauce for the broths anymore, just cutting up one or two small chili peppers makes the soup hotter.

The soups are becoming a really good diet trick because they have little to no calories (but have insane amounts of sodium).

Some chicken bullion, ginger/lemon grass (paste or the real deal), chili peppers, black pepper and salt has truly started becoming my morning coffee.

Living in Japan, it’s very hard to find properly spicy food or nice chilli sauces. I’ve resorted to just eating plain cut chilli. A while back, I experimented with not adding more spices than was already provided in my meals. No pepper, no chilli. After about a month, I started experiencing new tastes and flavours from foods I’ve always ate. It was amazing.

But I craved that endorphin high from spicy foods and have fallen back to my old ways.

> eating chili triggers an endorphin high, but regularly eating chili makes you less sensitive and hence you have to eat more chili to get your little high

I wonder what is the evolutionary reason for that. The older you are, the more defense you needed against bacteria?

Problem with this is that outside of the Americas no one was eating caspicum until about 500 years ago.
I didn't know this was a thing until I met my partner, who has it (and so does her mother), but there is a couple conditions called fissured tongue and geographic tongue ( ex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fissured_tongue ) which effectively means that her tongue is a lot more sensitive to salt/pepper/spicy than average. To the point where black/white pepper alone might give the same intensity chilli gives to a "normal" person. There are many reasons for the variance.
I dunno, i have fissured tongue (10-20% more visually dramatic than the Wikipedia headline photo) and i have the far and away the highest tolerance (for garlic/pepper/chile) of any of my family.

Might just be a coincidence with your partner.

I have a highly fissured tongue but still enjoy spicy foods. I think I'm a bit more sensitive to salt than most though. Go figure.
I have geographic tongue but thankfully it's not affected by spices. However, I can only use "regular" flavor toothpaste and "cinnamon" gum will send me to a world of pain and anguish. I wonder if and why different irritants affect different people differently.
> The prevalence of the condition increases significantly with age, occurring in 40% of the population after the age of 40.

Yikes! I love chilis and peppers. Couldnt imagine having this condition although my wife and kids may appreciate less spicy food.

Holy trypophobia
I mean, I get it, like I can't imagine being new to the scene and starting with "Unlimited Love" or something as your first listen, but of course - if you were there for the "Mothers Milk" era, it's obvious why you'd like the peppers.
Chilli peppers don't like waterlogged roots; they prefer higher ground. I'm told.
Haa, before I clicked I was thinking of saying something similar. New single is hot.
Reminded me of the old internet joke:

https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Nov/chili.html

Well, chili is not chilling at all for some people.
The article briefly mentions Paul Rozin, but his "benign masochism" framework is actually a more general theoretical explanation for why people like (apparent) negative experiences. It's quite interesting [0].

I'm trying to find an older paper by him where he goes into peppers more specifically. One thing I remember from it is that he notes that our enjoyment of spicy food is localised. I like the burning sensation of peppers in my mouth, not elsewhere on my body.

[0] https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

Capsicum patches are popular with athletes, a partner of mine would put them on her lower back when ballet would get strenuous.

We would sometimes forget about that before sex, and the capsicum would migrate. Neither of us enjoyed that much.

So we can rule the other mucous membranes out, for (almost!) everyone, but it can be pleasant over sore muscles.

shouldn't it be most humans? China and India and most of asia have chilli peppers and so does africa. It is the minority that cannot tolerate chillies.

prior to chillies, black pepper, ginger and garlic was used and if used in appropriate quantities gives you a similar result. chillies are just a lot more economical to grow.

I live in the Indian subcontinent. As long as I can remember, I have HIGHLY DISLIKED eating spicy food to a point when my sibling and I were kids, there used to be 2 dishes for lunch/dinner, one for the adults and one for kids. This is VERY unusual in our culture because kids are, out of this "practice of cooking 2 dishes" that parents train their kids to "eat chilli" from when they are very young. They are "trained" from a young age.

I probably had that done to me and they realized, "ah shucks. Let it be" and here I am today.

I take milk with my dinner when the food is spicy because that has always helped me.

The problem is, I am often ridiculed for not ensuring the spice of red chilli.

The day before, my parents "challenged" me to eat dinner without chilli for a month because according to them, "our body wants chilli". Mine doesn't.

edit: just to clarify, our spice cabinet in our home is an absolute monster, we have dozens of common and exotic spices which we use "on a daily basis" so even highly spicy food isn't the problem for me. "red chilli" in particular is troubling.

pick a chilli from a plant and eat it like how an animal would do in the wild. you'll want to jump into a pond after that. The chilli plant evolved in such a way that humans don't like chilli pepper. Humans used cooking and drying and diluting and other modern methods to reduce the ill-effects of spices and enjoy its flavors in small quantities.
What's interesting is that even among cultures that eat very spicy food, some absolutely cannot tolerate it. I have a friend from Chengdu and some friends in Malaysia who cannot eat anything spicy. It makes it hard for them to eat food outside and they've had to learn by trial and error the restaurants that can actually limit the amount of spiciness.
Sichuan pepper too; widely used across east Asia for a long time.
Can't tolerate? The world champions in chili eating contests are caucasian.
I thought the author would revisit the 90s discovery of "supertasters," people who have a heightened sense of taste. (People who like hot peppers usually have a diminished taste sensitivity and are not supertasters.) https://apnews.com/article/ee0a2d08c57a937913c86f53541d0e80 https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/accounting-for-taste/
Not convinced about that - first, spiciness is not a taste, because it affects the heat/pain receptors on your tongue rather than the taste buds. Of course, the sensitivity for spiciness varies a lot between individuals, and maybe it correlates with the sensitivity for taste. Second, it might be the other way around: people with diminished taste sensitivity appreciate spicy food because it adds some variety for them, but that doesn't mean people with normal or even heightened taste sensitivity can't appreciate spicy food.
I have a deviated septum and allergies. My nose gets plugged up pretty quickly.

Peppers make it much easier to keep things clear up there. It gets to the point where I start to crave peppers.

I rarely eat a meal without some kind of hot sauce. I've been leaning more towards Sriracha until this year's shortage, then reverted to Tabasco.

Try making your own sauces! Fry some chillies with a lot of oil and add some salt - that's it. In a glass that lasts forever. You can add other spices or e.g. peanuts or small tofu pieces for more flavour and texture. Works with fresh chillies but also with dried ones, which makes it super cheap - you'll get a kg bag at your local Indian/chinese shop for next to nothing. ou can vary it with different ingredients, powder vs chopped vs whole chillies, remove the seeds for more fruity and less spicy flavour, ..

Store the result in a strong condiment/jam glass (you don't want it leaking..). Also makes a great gift.

Apparently some animals love it as well. I lived in New Mexico in the heart of green chili country for many years, and it was not uncommon then for deer to jump over, chew through, or break down fences to get to chili plants.
No explanation in article. Popular theories:

- capsaicin is anti microbial

- used as a cultural marker of toughness

Personally I like the taste but also the mild high I get.

Interesting genre of article. It's like usual content-free content-marketing but it must have taken some work at least.

Bland, doesn't answer question it purports to, fairly generic. But requires research. Wonder if AI generated.

> Personally I like the taste but also the mild high I get

I make a sweet curry that guests have called "the stealth chicken" because the heat grows slowly, and people don't realize it is actually pretty brutally spicy until they are into the second helping (BTW - I do warn people about it). It takes 15-20 minutes to cool off, and even people who don't like spicy end up downing a plate or three (if they like the flavor of curry). Usually dinners with this dish are a blast because everyone is laughing at everything, no matter how unfunny. I've always wondered if it was endorphin that was enhancing the experience.

Well, at least for me, it is simple: a controlled pain sensation, in low quantities, giving a sense of excitement (even thinking about it gives me a tingling sensation and makes my mouth full of saliva), in higher - followed by a flood of endorphins. It is essentially getting high on locally-produced painkillers.

From anecdata, chili-loving is strongly correlated with sensation seeking, or rather: the balance between pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance.

It's not some intellectual matter to dissect. It's not that spicy food hurts less or tests better to me than to others but that I love the pain and the challenge and how far I can push my tolerance.

The "not minding the pain" aspect.

My limit is when it gets so spicy you spend the next 8-12 hours in pain like you drank acid. Find yourself a nice old thai place and make a special request "make me cry" and they will oblige.

All good things hurt at some point.

I've been growing chilis for 3 years and it's slowly become my hobby that gives me the most satisfaction. Most varieties (Especially Capsicum Chinense, the species that most superhots come from) calibrate very well to small spaces/resources. It's an incredibly satisfying hobby that gives an opportunity to get very technical with something without involving backlit screens, a wonderful social lubricant.
Summary: the linked text doesn't answer the headline question. It's more a literary excercise
Is there some secret trick to avoid trouble the day after?
I’ve always enjoyed the chili tasting interviews produced by Chili Klaus:

https://youtube.com/c/ChiliKlausDK/videos

There’s such a lovely range of human reactions to eating those little spicy-fruity peppers.

I like the taste of spicy food. But 8 hours later my guts are in misery. Any fixes? I asked my stomach/bowel doctor and he said he had the same problem. Knew of no solution.
> Peppers containing capsaicin—such as the Scotch bonnets used in Jamaican beef patties (shown here)—not only appeal to the tastebuds, they also can help preserve foods that otherwise might spoil.

Here it is, as expected.

I love spicy food, but the older that I get, the more my body (stomach/digestive system) does not agree with it. It's an unfortunate state of affairs.
The YouTube show Hot Ones opened me up to a whole new world of hot sauces that bring the heat along with great flavor.
Because a lot of meals a more bland than we like so we like to spice it up ?
Because they are "Red Hot"?
My question isn't "why do some humans love chili peppers"?

Spicy is tasty.

My question is "why do some people love ASSBLASTER 9000 NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST hot sauce"? You know, the kind that comes with a warning on it.

The difference is like sipping on a cocktail while the guy next to you chugs pure ethanol.

Because they hurt so good.
Their songs are nice(?
Why do we need a study for something that obvious ?

The answer is simple...

They make good music.

Edit: forgot you are not supposed to joke on HN

Humans don't like chilli pepper. It literally burns our mouth. We enjoy the burning feeling in small quantities.