I have two friends who eat spicy foods when they’re fighting colds.They claim that it helps clear out their sinuses.
In my case, I’ve found that my tolerance for spicy foods has decreased as I’ve gotten older. I still do occasionally like a little heat, but I have to be careful not to overdo it.
My husband does this.
I can’t abide the flavor of peppers, which actually bothers me more than the spiciness. I’m also allergic to eggplant, and probably have a mild allergy or sensitivity to peppers, which i internalize as “yucky!” So i suspect that’s one of the reasons i dislike food that is spicy from capsaicin. I enjoy small quantities of black pepper, mustard, and horseradish, and i adore ginger.
I do have a very sensitive palate, and it was even more so as a child. Yes, i taste all those subtle spices, and greatly enjoy them. And as a child, i found flavors like mustard and horseradish to be overwhelming and unpleasant. Now, with my diminished palate, i find that a little of them can perk up a dish.
I can’t deal with capsaicin heat, the mildest jalapeño and even banana peppers tend to be too much for me. But I love horseradish, wasabi, garlic, onion, and (within reason) black pepper.
Capsaicin heat kills flavor for me, and I want to taste what I’m eating (and not cry).
A bit of a side track: my first job was in a transport company. One major client was a chilli farming operation, who exported chillis overseas, to large-scale poultry farms. As mentioned above, poultry do not taste chilli, the reason it was in demand is because the intense red (a carotenoid, I think) makes the egg yolk a more vibrant colour. Without it (and marigold flowers, which we also moved) factory farm egg yolks are an insipid pale yellow.
In my fridge, right now, I have at least 8 or 9 extremely hot chilli sauces, about half home-made. 10 if you count the preserved cherries in rum, to which I added a few Thai chillis for a bit of zing. My mum was a good cook but she never used anything hotter than paprika.
I learnt to enjoy really hot chilli from teenage boy dares: who can eat one of the birds-eye chillis preserved in gin, made by my friends dad.
Birds-eye do not have a lot of flavour but they are pretty hot. I prefer habaneros. In fact, I will share the simplest chilli sauce recipe possible: obtain a jar of habaneros. Cover with honey and seal the jar. Set aside for about a year. The honey and the now raisin-like chillis are delicious with strong cheese, and pork.
This piques my interest (and tastebuds, perhaps). I’ve heard of the marigold thing before, but not about feeding chili to chickens for an intense yolk color. My question is whether feeding chili to poultry - who of course would eat it without complaint - would affect the taste of the egg.
I grow habaneros every year. Yes, habaneros grow in Alberta, Canada. Agree with your assessment: fruity and floral. And they freeze well. Great to add some zip to soups and stews, especially in winter.
ETA Aside: Store-bought Habaneros don’t have the same flavour as homegrown. Homegrown pops with flavour, store-bought is … well, it’s there.
And I think the opposite can also be true. My husband and I are illustrative – he can and will eat almost anything even marginally edible. Slime, gristle, food that’s beginning to turn bad … in it goes. He likes very hot food. He also has a poor sense of smell, and all his senses are nothing like as acute or sensitive as mine.
Me, I can eat white rice with nothing on it.
As I recall, the article would agree with you. Those with more discerning palates may or may not enjoy spicy foods, but those foods don’t serve the same purpose they do for those of us with sleepy taste buds.
My wife can tell the difference between different brands without seeing a label. I’m sure I could not unless there was some prominent difference. Coke? Pepsi? I don’t care, it’s all the same to me.
Another similarity with you, my sense of smell is not nearly as acute as my wife’s, which may explain things. “Do you smell that?” “Huh? No, I don’t smell anything.”