ALL THE REASONS YOU COULD NEED TO SPICE UP YOUR LIFE (HINT: THEY'RE ALL GAINZ RELATED)

ALL THE REASONS YOU COULD NEED TO SPICE UP YOUR LIFE (HINT: THEY'RE ALL GAINZ RELATED)

I’ve covered the topic in passing in the past, but I still don’t believe that my appreciation for, and subsequent belief that you should share that love for, pungent foods. That includes chili peppers, ginger, horseradish, mustard seeds, wasabi, black pepper, Indian long pepper, szechwan pepper, and a variety of other delicious stuff, and in addition to making your food delicious, pungent foods have a crazy array of health benefits ranging from improving the effectiveness of other chemicals you ingest to increased metabolism to the wholesale Vlad the Impaler-style slaughter of cancer, and they serve to separate the wusses from everyone else, because if you can’t handle spiciness, you probably can’t handle anything cool.

Therefore, the same type of people who think Eddie Murphy Raw is “too vulgar” and vastly prefer the comedic stylings of Jeff Dunham and other sundry clean comedians, people who prefer Michael Bolton to Cannibal Corpse, the people who willingly buy a beige Toyota Camry… those are the people who prefer their food bland and avoid pungent foods. In short, wusses and generally terrible, fat asses with low IQs and low testosterone (Begue).

And by the way:

 

“‘ALTHOUGH YOU FEEL LIKE IT’S BURNING [WHEN YOU EAT SPICY FOODS], IT’S ACTUALLY A TRICK OF THE MIND,’ HE SAYS, ADDING THAT SPICY FOODS DO NOT CAUSE ANY PHYSICAL HARM TO A WELL-FUNCTIONING DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. [EMPHASIS MINE] 

 

THE CHEF EXPLAINS THAT FIERY FOOD TASTES HOT BECAUSE CHEMICAL MOLECULES, SUCH AS CAPSAICIN, EXCITE PAIN RECEPTORS ON YOUR TONGUE THAT ARE LINKED TO THE SENSATION OF TEMPERATURE, NOT BECAUSE IT’S BURNING OFF YOUR TASTEBUDS. ‘IT’S MORE OF A SENSATION OF HEAT THAN SOMETHING PHYSICAL. INTERESTINGLY, SPEARMINT ACTUALLY HITS ON THE SAME RECEPTOR, CREATING A SENSE OF COLD.’ 

 

HOWEVER, CHEF PHILLIPS SAYS SPICY FOOD LOVERS AREN’T BORN WITH AN AFFINITY FOR HOT SAUCE. RATHER, IT’S ACQUIRED OVER TIME, AS CAPSAICIN AND OTHER SPICY FOOD MOLECULES DEPLETE A NEUROTRANSMITTER CALLED SUBSTANCE P, WHICH IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SENDING PAIN SIGNALS TO THE BRAIN” (SWEET). 

So, there’s no need to worry that you’re going to jack yourself up by kicking up the pungency level of your food a few notches- i.e. don’t be a wuss about this and just do it.

Burns So Good In So Many Ways

I will do my best to be as comprehensive as possible here, but I am certain there is no way I will manage to hit all the ways you can light your taste buds up like you were napalming a village of people in some far-away jungle who are sitting around listening to music that sounds like whales raping each other while completely unaware of the existence of the United States. Yeah, your ass is going to burn in ways you didn’t think were possible outside enhanced interrogation techniques or an anal probe by aliens, because as it turns out there is a hell of a lot more pungent stuff out there than just Sriracha and black pepper. Firstly, let’s look at what’s out there.

The Mustard Family

Love ’em or hate ’em, there are a lot of members of this family of plants that will blow your sinuses open like you filled a Netti Pot with Greek Fire.

Secondly, this family contains a wide range of plants, but the ones with which we are concerned contains allyl isothiocyanate (AITC). Found in your favorite nasal-scorching condiments like wasabi, horseradish, brown and black mustard (but not white/yellow mustard, which contains sinalbin rather than AITC), and radish. This stuff, unlike the capsaicin in chilies or the active ingredients in peppercorns, hits you in the sinuses rather than the mouth. We’ve all been there, a mouthful of wasabi or Chinese yellow mustard has your eyes tearing up like you just got whacked in the nose with a bit of rebar in a street fight, and any sinus congestion you may have had instantly dissipates. The health benefits of mustard oil go way beyond making Flonase look like dirty bathwater though. Check it out:

• it makes Advil it’s punk bitch because its anti-inflammatory properties are insane (Wagner)
• the precursor to AITC, sinigrin, is also found in all these veggies and may be an extremely potent nootropic (though the only evidence I could find of this is that it makes you much less retarded when whacked off your face on ketamine) (Yadav)
• clears up colds and the flu in a goddamned hurry, and might even cure your athlete’s foot- this stuff will slaughter anything in your body that’s not supposed to be there (including listeria, E. coli, and staph) due to its insanely strong antimicrobial and antifungal properties (Chacon)
• makes you less of a fatass, because it drastically improves insulin sensitivity (Ahn)

 

Black Pepper (which also includes white and green)

We’ve all used it. We all know what it tastes like. What you might not have known is that all the colors of peppercorns are all the same basic thing- the black peppercorn is a green (ripe) peppercorn that’s been dried, while the green peppercorn that is canned or otherwise preserved to retain its color, and the white peppercorn is just the seed of the pepper plant with the black bit removed. They all have slightly different flavors, but the thing that makes them awesome remains the same- piperine.

Piperine doesn’t do much on its own, but it is a badass companion to other stuff you might ingest.  Furthermore, its main claim to fame is its ability to drastically increase the bioavailability of just about everything and increase the length of time compounds remain active in your system (Han, Shoba). For instance, that means adding it to your food all day long makes almost everything you take that day hit harder, from your fat burner to your test booster to your joint supplement (this stuff increases the effectiveness of curcumin by 2000%). It also increases digestion, has antimicrobial properties, and improves mental function, so grab that pepper shaker and make it rain (Organic Facts).

Ginger (and Grains of Paradise)

In addition, if you’re like me and thought ginger was just reserved for crappy cookies and soda, you and I would both be wildly incorrect. Outside of those two things, I only really respected the spiciness of ginger after trying some ginger ale in South Carolina that will peel your goddamned wig back- Blenheim Ginger Ale. After that, I took one swig of that and thought I’d been poisoned. Seriously, Everclear goes down like water compared to Blenheim. If fire and gonorrhea screwed and had a baby in the form of a soda, that soda would be what you drank to chase Blenheim in the hopes it would wash away the pain. Moreover, that pain was caused by the volatile oils gingerol and paradol found in ginger. Gingerol is badass, because not only can you use it in BDSM to fire up someone’s holes, it:

• jacks up inflammation so hard that it can drastically reduce the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (Funk). The sore elbows you get from heavy benching can be a thing of the past if you chow down on ginger on the regular. Seriously- gingerol was shown in clinical trials to be as effective as ibuprofin in reducing menstrual cramps and improves digestive health rather than burning a hole in your guts (Ozgoli).
• Likewise, keeps you from being a diabetes-ridden fatass with cellulite on your face and sadness in your heart- it lowers bodyfat, blood sugar, free fatty acids, LDL cholesterol, and all the other horrible nonsense that comes with being a disgusting pile of blubber (Naami)
• For example, raises testosterone levels and increases testicular size. Yep- you will likely get more swole and rock a better hardon by including a hell of a lot of ginger in your diet (Kamtchouing).

 

Paradol, which is the active ingredient in Grains of Paradise and is also found in ginger, is aromatic ketone that brings the ruckus as well. Because I’m sure you guys are unaware of Grains of Paradise’s existence (I recently discovered it because my girlfriend has it in a pepper shaker and wondered what in the hell I’d seasoned my ribs with), it’s often confused with black pepper and to me tastes like a milder black pepper. Frankly, it is worth adding to everything in addition to black pepper because it:

• After that, increases total body energy expenditure dramatically… meaning it will make you fat less fat just by adding it to your food (Sugita)
• may raise testosterone levels in humans (because it sure as hell seems to in rats) (Akpanabiatu)
• balances blood sugar so well it’s used as a cure (not a treatment for it, a goddamned cure) for diabetes in Africa (Ezuruike) 

 

Long Pepper

Never heard of it. I hadn’t either until an episode of one of my two favorite podcasts (Milk Street Radio) encouraged me to get out there and investigate the great wide world of peppers out there. Long pepper is spicier than black pepper and was the preferred pepper of Europe until the fourteenth century. After that, it was replaced by chilies coming from the New World because it has a similar flavor and pungency to chilies. The stuff that brings the heat in the long pepper is piperlonguime (PPL), and it’s a goddamned beast. It:

• In addition, improves brain health like crazy (Prasad)
• In short, is the Robin to other stuff’s Batman. Like piperine, it enhances the bioavailablity of various pharmaceuticals and supplements (Patel)
• fights inflammation like a firefighter fighting a last stand in a forest fire (Prasad)
• makes you forget there is even such a thing as prostate cancer, because it effectively kills it at the start (Golovine)
• jacks up your fat metabolism to keep you lean and mean (Prasad)
  
  

According to Reddit, this entire article is a hate crime. And I refuse to google “xd”- I just despise every person who uses it and live in the knowledge that whatever it means, it’s the sole purview of people whom I loathe.

So, the takeaway is that if you’re not making your food as pungent as possible, you’re a stupid ass and a wuss, and you have no one to blame for your fatness, athlete’s foot, low T, and stupidity but yourself. Only bland people like bland food. Don’t be bland, and for all that’s unholy don’t be fat.

Pungency is Power.

For more informative blogs by Chaos and Pain click here.

Sources:

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Akpanabiatu MI, Ekpo ND, Ufot UF, Udoh NM, Akpan EJ, Etuk EU. Acute toxicity, biochemical and haematological study of Aframomum melegueta seed oil in male Wistar albino rats. J Ethnopharmacol. 2013 Nov 25;150(2):590-4.

Bègue L, Bricout V, Boudesseul J, Shankland R, Duke AA. Some like it hot: testosterone predicts laboratory eating behavior of spicy food. Physiol Behav. 2015 Feb;139:375-7.

Carollo, Kim. The World’s Hottest Pepper: Brings Pleasure and Pain Relief. ABC News. 20 Feb 2012. Web. 15 May 2014. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/capsaicin-ingredient-hot-peppers-offers-medical-benefits/story?id=15727011

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Organic Facts. 9 amazing facts about black pepper. Organic Facts.

21 Jan 2018. Web. 31 Mar 2018. https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/herbs-and-spices/health-benefits-of-black-pepper.html

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