When I was a kid, we had a Mexican neighbor who suggested to my Mom that she add jalapeño to the chili she made. She did. (She didn’t tell me so until I was nearly 40.) Whenever she made chili for dinner, I was always going for my water glass–not my Mom, my Dad, or my brother or sister. We have no Hispanic ancestry. How can this lack of sensitivity to jalapeños on the part of the rest of my family be?
Wow. This will end well, I’m sure.
Is there any evidence at all that tolerance of hotness (in the sense of the hotness of peppers) has a genetic component? My impression is that the main thing that affects one’s tolerance of hotness is how accustomed one has become to tasting hot peppers. In other words, if you continue to include hot peppers as a part of your diet, you will gradually become tolerant of them.
Sounds about right. Anecdote I know, but when I was a kid I had very low tolerance for hotness, to the extent that my Mum will still make chili for me with very little actual chili in it. As I’ve got older and been more open to trying different foods, my tolerance has definitely increased. In fact, last year I entered a chili eating competition which I somewhat regretted immediately afterwards, but I have noticed a definite step up in the amount of hotness I can take since then.
That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some sort of genetic component to it as well, but I don’t see any reason Hispanics or any other group should be genetically more tolerant than anyone else.
Strictly anecdotal, but as a kid our family diet was outstandingly bland. Many years later, I discovered chili peppers and went wild over them. I think I can eat hotter foods than most people in my inner circle. This would tend to contradict the genetic theory.
Kids literally taste differently than adults, or even older children. They tend to - tend, mind, it’s not set in stone - strongly favor sweets and shy away from bitter and spicy. As we age, we lose taste buds and the shape of our nose changes, and so food tastes different to us. Foods we loved as kids taste sickeningly sweet now, and flavors (like coffee) which were once “yuck!” are now enjoyed.
There’s one theory that says poisonous plants are often high in bitter alkaloids (that part’s fact, this upcoming part is the theory) and that we’ve evolved not to like that flavor and its close cousin spicy, until we’re old enough to have learned what’s likely to be safe to eat.
In other words, kids are somewhat naturally picky eaters, because if they weren’t picky eaters in the wild, every time Mom turned her back, they’d be putting plants in their mouths and poisoning themselves to death left and right and never reaching reproductive age. Those that were born with “picky” palates survived longer and passed that trait on to their offspring. Of those, the ones that then became less picky as teens and adults didn’t starve to death in times of famine, and thus we have our current state: a tendency to be picky eaters as kids and less picky as teens and adults.
There’s no correlation that I’m aware of between being born from people who colonized Mexico, Central and South America and tolerating spicy foods because of genetics. “Hispanic” isn’t even one of those races which has loose correlations with genetics, as far as I know. If you look at the genome of a Hispanic person, it will show you parts that came from Europe, parts that came from Native Americans, and probably parts that came from Asia (through those Native American ancestors). Hispanic is an entirely culturally constructed “race”.
So my guess is that you were the baby, and thus your brother and sister had gotten old enough to enjoy the heat and you hadn’t. Of course, it’s also just possible that you are a person who didn’t, doesn’t and never will enjoy spicy foods, and they are. But it has nothing to do with Hispanic DNA; plenty of non-Hispanic people love jalapenos, and plenty of non-Hispanic cultures have cuisines which are as spicy or spicier than your average pot of chili.
How can your outlier-relative-to-your-family oversensitivity – to what is, in the larger scheme of things, not that powerful a chile – be?
(ETA – See WhyNot’s post for the non-rhetorical answer)
I think it’s age. My parents used to eat jalapenos out of a jar with the juice to wash them down. I tried one (at 10), and, well, epic fail.
I can now (at cough cough 50+) eat habaneros and sometimes the dreaded jolokia pepper. The only effects I have are at the other end…
I’m going to go with experience. Both my parents were white-bread eaters with very little heat tolerance. I, OTOH, eat jalapenos as a snack like ministryman’s folks. I put habs on my salads.
I wish my mom had served stuff like that when I was a kid. I loved it. My mom was always all, “Eat your vegetables! They’re good for you!” while serving me crap like broccoli and cauliflower and brussels sprouts. It never occurred to her that things like peppers and onions are also nutritious vegetables. Because, gee, she didn’t like them.
What I’m unsure of is where I acquired my taste for hot food (no habaneros, but considerably hotter than 95% of the population). My mom will tolerate a little, but far less than me, and my dad literally thought that capsaicin was a tool of the Devil. Even granting that there’s no significant genetic component, I had to have learned my taste for the stuff somewhere, but I honestly can’t fathom where.
I’ve gone into Ethnicity versus Race before. Those considered Hispanic can have ancestors from The Americas, Africa and/or Europe. As far as food goes, it’s a matter of environment.
Lots of Texans have Anglo or “Anglo/Celtic” roots but we’ve learned to enjoy picante food. Houston cuisine has a definite Louisiana influence–which can be hot & spicy. And we’ve got a lot of Asians here–chiles came from the New World, but the Thais (for example) really love them…
There are parts of the USA where onions are considered exotic. Let us hope that The Food Network & the internet continue to teach people that there are other ways to eat…
Genetically a supertaster can have issues with extremes of taste, uber sweet uber sour uber bitter and uber hot bother me. Actually, I pretty much do not like peppers ranging from bell peppers through ghost peppers. What mrAru considers mild has me running for a gallon of milk.
Same here. My folks are both of Polish extraction. When I was a kid, about 8, I remember having a slice of pizza with Tabasco on it (I was curious at what some of the adults were putting on their pizza), and I remember it being hot as a motherfuck. Now, Tabasco literally is just vinegar with a hint of heat to me. It’s not hot at all. Habaneros is about where the heat starts to really register. That said, I’ve had jalapenos that have packed a punch, too. They’re a lot bigger than habaneros, so a whole pepper of a particularly hot jalapeno pepper can register as fairly fiery to the palate, even though it’s not a particularly hot pepper.
It’s all conditioning.
Another vote for conditioning.
I went with a group of 40 Americans of all ages to spend two years in Sichuan province, China, home of the most unholy spicy food on the planet. This is a region where a pretty common side dish is a big pile of hot peppers, the most famous soup is a boiling cauldron of hot peppers, and even breakfast is hot as all get out.
People went in with different tolerances, and there were a lot of breakdowns in the first few weeks. A lot of the older people, especially, swore they just wouldn’t be able to do it. People contemplated going home because of the food.
Two years later, we were, to a man, all happily chowing down on food that could make a grown man cry.
Oh, yes, definitely conditioning. Frigging Flaming Hot Cheetos make me cry. 
Like, tear coming out of the eyeball and everything.
I’m taking a food science course right now, this topic was covered, and this answer is completely correct. There is no genetic predisposition.
Yeah I have to agree. It’s conditioning all the way.
I could never stand anything remotely hot as a kid. Now I eat japenenos like candy and I can do shots of tobasco.
You don’t happen to have the recipe? I like chili with a bit of fire in it.
Let’s face it, you’re just insensitive. At least to capsaicin. 
Everything you are you inherited from your parents. Hair color, eye color, potential for certain diseases, height, etc. Your family is simply more sensitive to capsaicin than you are.
Over the decades, I’ve met several Mexicans, Koreans, and Texans who can not eat spicy hot food. Nationality has nothing to do with it. I have eaten very hot spicy food but I can’t say I enjoy it. And always eat ice cream for dessert.
Sensitivity is the right word when talking about capsaicin. Capsaicin is not one of the 5 recognized “tastes”. You can rub sugar (sweet) or lemon juice (sour) on your skin and you won’t be able to tell if it’s sweet or sour. Rubbing capsaicin on your skin or the inside of your mouth can result in a chemical burn. The more sensitive a person is or the stronger the capsaicin concentration is, they may have to use rubber gloves just to handle peppers that you can chew.
I prefer to serve hot pepper sauce on the side. If someone wants that pepper bite, they can add as much as they want. If I want to add a green pepper taste to a dish, I add green pepper. Adding capsaicin laden peppers to a dish doesn’t increase the taste of green pepper.