Foundations Reading 2B

Chap 4 Reading 2B

THE HOTTEST CHILIES You may have experienced the feeling. Your mouth feels like it's on fire. Your eyes start to water. You just ate one of nature's hottest foods—the chili pepper! Chili peppers, also called chilies, are found in dishes around the world. They are in dishes like Indian curries, Thai tom yum soup, and Mexican enchiladas. Chilies come from the capsicum plant. They are "hot" because they contain something called capsaicin. Capsaicin is very good for your health. It helps you breathe better, and it may even help keep you fit. Capsaicin makes you feel less hungry. It also makes your body burn more calories. We can measure the heat of chilies in units called Scoville heat units (SHU). The world's hottest chili is the Carolina Reaper. It sometimes measures up to million SHU! Eating a hot chili can be painful, but some people love to eat them. Anandita Dutta Tamuly, a woman from Assam, India, became famous for eating chilies. She ate 51 hot peppers in just two minutes! The peppers were Naga Jolokia ("ghost peppers"). They grow in Assam and are the third-hottest chilies in the world. "I found eating chilies was a great way to stay healthy," says Tamuly. She began eating chilies when she was a child. She eats chilies when she is sick, too. "Every time I have a cold or flu, I just eat some chilies and I feel better. To be honest, I barely notice them now."

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