Why do people like spicy food when it hurts so much?

Endorphins.

Grew up on Louisiana Creole cooking. It doesn't bother me. For some, it's cultural.

I like heat spice up to medium level. But if you can't taste the food beyond just the heat, I don't see the point.

I love spicy food, very spicy, even, though I'm not interested in some special olympics of the savory spiced and seasoned; I've no interest for eating plates piked high with off-the-Scoville scale chilis.

But I can eat foods that are firey hot, hot enough to make my eyes water, hotter than I would ever make the dish because the heat overpowers all else. It's no problem at either end of the eating equation.

Different people react differently to different things.

I don't have anything that resembles a stomach ache or heartburn, etc. Maybe a small sensation every couple years of food as an internal irritant. There are foods I dislike the taste of, but I can't think of anything that upsets my stomach.

People in South East Asia love very very hot foods, and look how they turn out to be: shithole, underdeveloped hellhole. Extremely hot foods cause endorphin overload, and in turn, your body is addicted to it. Over times, your brain will get zapped out and become prematurely senile.

Countries with spicy food: Mexico, Thailand, Korea(s), India, some Chinese regions. Who else?

Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, too.

Korean foods are as 1/100 hot as hot Thai foods.

r5 Arabs and Africans generally hate spicy food and they are the textbook definition of shitholes,

Because it doesn't hurt. At least not me. Just don't eat spicy food if it hurts you but it doesn't a lot of people.

[quote]R5] Arabs and Africans generally hate spicy food

First of all...no.

humans like pain

I mistakenly thought Latin American countries had lots of spice and heat in their cuisine.. turns out its only Mexican food. And a little bit in Peruvian food

I think it's an acquired taste, sort of like alcohol and butt sex. At first it's repulsive—why would anyone willingly…? But then you do it again and over time grow to like it. Soon you realize you can hardly function without spice in your mouth, mezcal in your gut, and dick in your butt.

OP, do you like sugar? I hate the way sugar makes me feel, especially chocolate with its repugnant aftertaste. People like different things.

[quote]I think it's an acquired taste, sort of like alcohol and butt sex. At first it's repulsive—why would anyone willingly…? But then you do it again and over time grow to like it. Soon you realize you can hardly function without spice in your mouth, mezcal in your gut, and dick in your butt.

Surely my love of spicy and exotic foods owes in part to having grown up in a household where the unrelenting sameness of the menu and the blandness of the food on offer put me in a mood to explore other foods at the earliest opportunity. I left my parents' house in 1977 having once had garlic at their table, and only that because it was prepared by the Italian-American wife of a colleague of my father. You might have thought we were supping on baby's blood. I never had artichoke, green salad, lobster, oysters, a bagel, marble rye, fish not encrusted in batter and fried (well), Chinese food, Asian food, Mexican food, Polish food, Greek food, Middle Eastern or North African food, Spanish food, Indian food, nothing Caribbean, South American. I only had pizza in the couple years before I left because I learned to make it myself. Anything exotic was viewed as suspect and surely one bite would rot out one's stomach from the extremes of spice, hotter than the devil's asshole, no doubt.

For all my blander than bland upbringing, I have a cast iron stomach. No heartburn, indigestion, queasiness...no repercussions. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the path to taking up cock in ass in earnest (and then some) was a parallel one. Fit like a glove straight away and there was no going back to the old ways.

Best hot sauce commercial ever!

I need spice. I can’t deal with unspiced food; it tastes so dull and bland. I can’t believe some people don’t like spice

R16, there's a difference between spicy-savory and spic- hot. For example, typical stuffing for a turkey is very savory - loaded with salt, pepper and many herbs. Greek food is very savory with herbs and spices. Italian food, especially red-sauce Italian-American food, is savory-spicy, but neither cuisine is particularly hot.

I do enjoy bland, rich food - bring on the egg custard! - but I also love highly savory-spicy food. I just don't care for hot-spicy food beyond a mild tease of heat.

My point is that there's a middle ground between eating nothing but white bread, scrambled eggs and sugared milk and eating food hot enough to strip wallpaper.

^^^ "spicY-hot", not "spic-hot". No comment on the Freudian slip ...

It's better than having cum in your eye!

If it burns a bit coming out from the body, I feel cleansed.

Sounds counterintuitive, but chilis are GERD repellent.

I need spice to feel like I’m not eating boring Iowa baby food

Why are White people in the North so squeamish about spice and seasoning?

Upper midwest was settled by a lot of Swedes and Norwegians. No one ever says, "Let's go out for some Swede."

Or, "There's a new Norge spot I've heard has great food."

Both countries are not very well prized for their cuisine.

The further north you go, the less spice and flavor in the food.

I have eaten stuff so hot that you may as well lick the sun.

I have NEVER had it hurt going through or coming out.

I like some spicy, but nothing too overly spicy. For some reasons, Jalapeños taste like shit to me and completely overthrow the taste of other foods they are used in. Cannot stand them. But in tiny, small doses they are ok.

Red pepper flakes are the same to me. A little goes a long way.

Those peppers they use in Chinese food are awful.

Spicy foods do hurt my bum when coming out. I remember an episode of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon says he believes that our sphincters have taste buds and he used the example of spicy foods hurting on the way out as his basis for this belief. Maybe he was on to something.

My ass burns just eating tabasco sauce.

I used to love spicy food all the time, then it started making my pee hole burn so I cut it down to once a week.

[quote]Jalapeños taste like shit to me and completely overthrow the taste of other foods they are used in

R27, maybe it's not the spiciness of the jalapenos, but rather the intensely green, grassy taste. I feel the same way about green pepper. I love red or yellow bell peppers, but the green ones just taste too "green" for me. Jalapenos have that same flavor, although the heat helps disguise it.

Because eating a good meal should make you feel like you ran a marathon and then got fucked hard and put away wet.

You should need a damp cloth and a lie down, or why bother at all. For those who can't manage, you can always go home and open a tin of Van Camp's beans.

Calabria cuisine can be spicy.

It suppresses your appetite.

Fire in the hole. One time as a younger man, I was challenged by a female bartender, in front of make clients, that I couldn't handle the nuclear chicken wings. I ordered them and ate them. Not all of them but more than a few. The next day my asshole burned so badly when I took I shit, that I had to sit in a bath of cold water so my ring could calm down a bit.

I grew up eating a lot of spicy foods/different cuisines, as my Dad was one of those who kept a big jar of jalapenos in the fridge, and we ate a lot of Mexican and Asian food as well. I'm not one who wants to challenge myself to eating ghost peppers, but i do enjoy a kick to my food. When i order Indian (which we never had growing up and man! was that a flavor explosion!), I ask for it be medium or hot spicy - NOT American spicy. There has only been one time when I had to take a break every 2 or 3 bites, but I still ate my usual amount and enjoyed it. It gave me a bit of a high, honestly. I don't have problems with it coming out the other end.

OP, if it hurts in all those directions, there might be something wrong with your GI tract.

R35/R36 I actually do like eating spicy food to a degree, given the mouth burning soon goes away. But a few hours later, my belly starts to burn and hurt, which usually lasts all night long. And usually sometime in the middle of the night, I wake up with belly cramps, and it takes at least 15-20 minutes of burning diarrhea for the stomach pain to stop. Long story short, it’s usually not worth the torture.

Why do people like anal when it hurts so much?

R38 It doesn’t hurt if you do it right.

r30, I think you're right. I, too hate green peppers but the others are fine. And yes, cooked tiny pieces of jalapeño's I don't seem to mind.

Are you an eldergay, OP? Complaining about food being "too spicy" is something I associate with old people.

Arabs and Africans are shithole because of their Religion of Peace! Auntie R8 needs to think further and wider!

Chiles have medicinal properties when used in combination. Horseradish will open your sinuses. Clove and cinnamon will alleviate a toothache. Turmeric, ginger and garlic are anti-inflammatories. Chiles stimulate the metabolism. Many of these have antifungal properties.

It's all in the blend and the score in Scoville units.

Op when you become 60 it's hard to enjoy spicy food anymore. Hope that helps.

My white grandfather ate very hot foods and I am convinced it was a macho thing. My Native American grandfather had a very delicate stomach. I occasionally eat moderately hot stuff because it just tastes good. But rarely. I’m more like the Native side on this one.

I grow my own chilis and make my own hot sauce, chili flakes, and chili powder. Easy to do and I control the amount of heat.

I have some chili powder made with bhut jalokias and tempered with habaneros. I just have to SHOW the foods I'm seasoning the spice jar I store it in. The heat travels into the food by unseen means. Ha!

You know, the solution is to select foods and spice levels that are appropriate to your liking.

Don't eat foods so hot that you are unhappy - it's really that simple.

I like hot sauce, Tabasco, sambal but as a piquant relish on the side.

An Indian friend of mine took me to a Bangladeshi restaurant, telling me that it was similar to Indian food, which I usually like. Well, hell. The food they served me was so spicy, my mouth and lips were on fire for the next 2-3 hours. I was pissed. I couldn't taste a thing but pain.

It's why I refuse to go to a Thai restaurant. It was the thing to do for a while. I went twice and never again.

[quote] I mistakenly thought Latin American countries had lots of spice and heat in their cuisine.. turns out its only Mexican food.

It's not even most Mexican food that's spicy: it's Tex-Mex.

Most of the food you would buy in a nice restaurant in Mexico City, for example, is not that spicy.

I had some authentic red beans and rice once and it was deceptively spicy. It tasted great but that was terrible. My stomach was bubbling and my asshole was on fire. I didn't think it was possible for your asshole to react to spicy food like that.

Never again.

I love hot and spicy foods and chile peppers. It doesn't cause me any pain. I've got several kinds of hot sauce in the door of my refrigerator.

The one cuisine that I would consider borderline too-hot would be Thai food. Specifically, the green papaya salad. Yes, you can order it mild, but I wanted to see how hot "Thai hot" was. I found out.

I fucking despise Thai food. But that’s probably because I once dated a psycho who kept threatening to kill himself every time I tried to break it off. He LOVED Thai food. We ate Thai food all the time. Thai food reminds me of him. I hate Thai food.

Show me on the puppet where the pepper hurt you, OP.

[quote]It's why I refuse to go to a Thai restaurant. It was the thing to do for a while. I went twice and never again.

About a year ago I ate at a northern Thai restaurant and a lot of the things on the menu weren't hot.

And when we asked the waiter about it, he told us that it's the cuisine of the southern half of Thailand that tends to be spicy.

I do know that Malaysian food can pack the heat.

I ate at a place where, when you order from the menu, you also say how spicy you want it (from 1 to 5).

I figured medium (3) would be right for me because when I go to other restaurants and there's a spice level, I always say medium and it's fine - and I'd add it's even more than fine when I get an Indian dish that prepared with yogurt as one of the ingredients.

Well Malaysian medium - or at least this restaurant's medium - is a whole other story.

This was one of the hottest meals I ever ate.

I can't imagine what a 5 would have been like.

I grew up in Texas and had very spicy food my whole life, of many varieties, because my family were foodies and didn’t mind spicy. TexMex, Cajun, Indian, Thai, etc. My body is used to the “burning ring,” etc.

But one thing I’ve never understood was Sriracha sauce. I first started seeing people rave about it in the 90’s and now it’s everywhere (still). It tastes vile to me. Even the smell. It tastes like soap or something and when you put it on things it seems to erase all the other tastes but that. I don’t mind the spicy-ness, it’s the bizarre taste. Does anyone else have this reaction to Sriracha?

It sucks because it’s still everywhere. Vendors will drizzle it on your food without even asking because they assume everyone loves it.

[quote]And when we asked the waiter about it, he told us that it's the cuisine of the southern half of Thailand that tends to be spicy.

Um, I was under the impression that it was the other way around. Maybe the "north-north" is different.

R57, do you dislike green bell peppers? Sriracha has a bitterness to it sort of like green bell peppers.

I do like sriracha on some things, not everything.

R59 Interesting. But no, I like green bell peppers. I don’t love them but they taste fine to me.

[quote]R57: But one thing I’ve never understood was Sriracha sauce. I first started seeing people rave about it in the 90’s and now it’s everywhere (still). It tastes vile to me. Even the smell. It tastes like soap or something and when you put it on things it seems to erase all the other tastes but that. I don’t mind the spicy-ness, it’s the bizarre taste. Does anyone else have this reaction to Sriracha?

Not I, R57. I've been using Sriracha since the middle 80s.

People usually complain of a soap flavor in connection with cilantro, not Sriracha.

[quote]R59: do you dislike green bell peppers? Sriracha has a bitterness to it sort of like green bell peppers. I do like sriracha on some things, not everything.

Not to me, it doesn't. That flavor you're tasting might be the garlic, being as how Sriracha is 'chili-garlic sauce.'

Are you two even talking about actual Sriracha? The sauce in question is bright red, right? Not green?

I'm also not sure where you're getting it from, since Huy Fong Foods stopped marketing back in June, due to a climate-driven chili pepper shortage. Currently, there's no Sriracha in stores.

My big lockdown achievement was learning to make Basil chicken, pad thai, larb, thai fried rice and various curries--green, red, yellow, penang and massaman. Sometimes I cheat with thai sauces and pastes by Lobo, Masri and Blue Elephant, which are Thai brands, unlike Thai Kitchen, which is America. I dilute or add sugar to the sauces and pastes that are too hot. Still hot but it slows down the approach. I don't want to say anything dismissive to Thai food haters but these dishes are relatively easy and delicious. Keep an open mind and adjust the heat. Also a fabulous way to stretch meat and poultry.

[quote] I fucking despise Thai food. But that’s probably because I once dated a psycho who kept threatening to kill himself every time I tried to break it off. He LOVED Thai food.

R54, hopefully, you can get back to eating Thai food, again. It's great. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater.

it's Maesri and I meant American, not America, obviously,

A little bit of exotic now and then does a soul good.

Like someone said above, it's just a anal - a little bit of roughness does a hole good.

Life's too short to be vanilla all the time.

You have to get slowly used to spices. When you do, things taste bland without it.

It’s just like when people add salt to food. After a while everything tastes bland unless you add more and more

It's amazing that people think they know what goes on in other people's mouths! Comments like,

can't taste the food beyond just the heat, I don't see the point

Are very subjective and superior sounding, I have rarely tasted food too spicy, yet not liking stinking slimey fish seems to be baby tastes.

R62, do you love their pad thai?

If it’s so hot that it numbs your mouth and you can no longer taste, what’s the point?

[quote] I'm also not sure where you're getting it from, since Huy Fong Foods stopped marketing back in June, due to a climate-driven chili pepper shortage.

The Marxist NPR article says “may be due to” which means it isn’t. The climate cult freaks love this crap.

I love spicy food, chile, and hot sauce. You build a tolerance to it if you eat it a lot. It livens things up.

[quote]R70: The Marxist NPR article says “may be due to” which means it isn’t. The climate cult freaks love this crap.

Facts are on their side, R70.

My mom loved spicy food. I'm the only one of us kids that also had the same tastes. She's half Mexican.

I just remember my siblings and dad getting the same bland meals while my mom would often make us something so spicy you'd have to clear the kitchen and dining room. It's our cute thing we shared.

As an adult, I kicked up the spice a notch when I went vegan a few years ago. My partner is the opposite. I can add things after I'm done cooking, I just can't cook with anything of that sort.

Earlier this year I had a "ghost pepper" salsa that made my eyes water and my nose run. I'd finally met my match.

[Quote] If it’s so hot that it numbs your mouth and you can no longer taste, what’s the point?

For those used to spices, it doesn’t numb their mouths, it enhances the taste

Why do people like large cocks when they hurt so much?

For me the spice of Cajun food is the perfect amount.

I was in heaven when I visited New Orleans. Every meal, from a fancy restaurant to a hole in the wall, tastes unbelievably delicious.

Endorphins! There's a little rush of feel-good chemicals after eating something sufficiently spicy.

For me it's spicy enough when I develop a little scalp sweat. I like that sensation.

OP is the sort of person whose cuisine is grounded in what it's like coming out as her shit.

OP is much worse than Hitler.

I'll venture into a little spicy heat...like Frank's Hot Sauce, Chinese mustard in packets, prepared horse radish...even a little red pepper flakes. I can't take the extreme heat....too intense. I don't know how people can do that.

R62, but you can’t make Thai food without nam pla, can you?

I can stand nam pla in a cooked dish as long as it’s not too strong, but I can’t stand to have it in my kitchen. That fishy reek kills any appetite I had for the food it’s in.

I’d love to make simple Thai dishes myself at home. I love things like pad Thai and tom kha gai, but I’m allergic to shellfish, so I avoid southeast Asian restaurants. If it were possible to make them at home without ruining my enjoyment with that fermented fish stink, it would be great.

R62 here. I use the mixes for curries, not pad thai. Getting the right pad thai ingredients is pricey at first but you amortize it--tamarind, palm sugar, dried shrimp or preserved radish. Sometimes I do a peanut sauce instead of tamarind. Lobo does have a pad thai sauce but I haven't tried it.

I use Red Boat fish sauce. The smell doesn't bother me. You could wrap the bottle in a a plastic bag or freeze small portions. The food is as good as take-out because I'm using organic meats and veggies.

And, yes, you can adjust the heat.

Thai/Malaysia/Southeast Asia spiciness usually from fresh bird-eye chili which is sharp and fruity. The sensation come and go quickly.

Indian/South Asian heat are from dried chilis ( usually powdered ) which tends to be slow burn and stay in your mouth and belly for a while.

Westerner in general are better in handling Southeast Asian cuisine than diarrhea-inducing Indian food.

Not only do I love spicy food, I eat each type of pepper throughout the week, and also use berbere spice on my food as well. Doesn’t hurt because I drink coconut banana smoothies, which protect my stomach. Generally I use less of the hot peppers and more of the mild ones so my food is medium spicy. In Mexico the term is grosero to describe food too hot to enjoy

R83 gives a generally good summation, I think, of Thai/Malaysia/Southeast Asia vs. Indian/South Asian types of heat.

Neither upsets my experience of taste or digestion, though. I don't enjoy a shot glass sized spoon full of fire hot sauce meant as an ingredient in some larger composition, nor eating a pile of peppers (except the mostly mild padrón peppers served in a heaping plate of fried deliciousness in Spain, candy by comparison to some wildly hot peppers.).

Why do BOTTOMS like getting FUCKED so much when it hurts so much?

People that hoover up spicy food have no appreciation of nuance.

Ironic, R87, since your generalization of those who like spicy food lacks nuance.

One of the 12 signs of impending death…

Cream of Wheat is suddenly too spicy.

French cuisine is the world's best cuisine. It is never spicy in the sense people are using here, although it can be peppery. French cuisine is also rarely garlicky (with a few exceptions), despite the stereotype. Neither hot spices nor intense garlic are subtle, and good French cooking is always about subtlety.

I don't love hot-spicy food, but I get why people do. However, I don't understand people who claim that food has to be hot or it's "too bland". That shows as little culinary sophistication as disliking any "spicy" food.

I think a lot of vegetarians start liking spicy food because it adds to the variety of what we can eat. I also think that when I'm very congested or sick, I want really spicy food to try to blow my sinuses out. It's sort of instinctive.

I used to work by this Thai place, and they would also do the 1 to 5 spicy rating. I didn't really know what I wanted so I would say "I like spicy, but not blow your head off spicy." There was this old racist woman who never went with us. She once said that countries known for spicy food are poor countries where the people have to make use of rotten foods, so they put lots of spice into it. I have no idea if there is any truth to that, but it didn't change my appreciation for the food. My mom worked nearby that place for a while. One time when I had a bad cold I called her from work and asked if she could take me there for lunch (meaning, could she pay for it). I remember her saying "I don't know how you can eat that..." because it was too spicy for her. It probably wasn't really vegetarian, but close enough. My husband won't eat Thai, so my Thai days are over.

Again, as a half vegetarian family, we ate a decent amount of ethnic food. I was always so-so about Indian food. One night about 25 years ago I went out to dinner and to see Carlito's Way with my brother and maybe some friends of his. I was so sick that night that it was like the scene from Bridesmaids. I was sitting on the toilet but had to barf at the same time, so I was barfing chunks into the sink and the bathtub. I have used that as an excuse to stop eating Indian food.

Mexican food is a whole other animal. I AM IN LOVE WITH MEXICAN FOOD, notably cheese enchiladas. My husband says he wants to divorce me and marry a Mexican lady who can cook. My son loves Mexican and loves spicy. My daughter doesn't like spicy and often ruins the fun when we want to eat Mexican food. Again, I don't want blow your head off spicy, but some spice adds to the yum.

I like my asshole to burn but I'm afraid of fire.

Also, I used to be really really thin and never had heartburn. I didn't even understand what it was. Then when I was pregnant I started getting it, especially after eating a lot of tomatoes or tomato sauce. Now that I am generally a tubby hippopotamus, I get it from time to time. It's not just from spicy food, but it it definitely related to my weight.

R92 Enough with the Flyover Dad jokes. No one's asshole burns from spicy foods.

When was the last time you heard someone say, "Boy, I'd really love a veal blanquette or sole Veronique."

It makes my tongue curl

[quote]Westerner in general are better in handling Southeast Asian cuisine than diarrhea-inducing Indian food.

I find it to be the other way around for me.

As I suggested in R56, the heat in Indian food for me is tempered when the dish includes yogurt or some cream, or if I'm having a lassi with my meal.

In contrast, there's no dairy in Thai or Malaysian dishes and so the heat pack a bit more of a punch.

R94 Apparently the OP's asshole does too. Now why don't you go back to getting fisted. Apparently yours is devoid of any feeling.

r97 Southeast Asians substitute yogurt/dairy with coconut milk with the same effect to cut down the spiciness.

What a bunch of racist scum. Please go find your own site trump has a site for you go there.

I've never found Indian, Burmese, or Schezwan that spicy. Now Thai food, yes- I think I tried "Med Thai spicy" in a restaurant that had a Thai Elvis in L.A., and it was so hot, I started hiccuping. I only got slightly burning bum though.

It seems that peppers flourish in hot climates, no? Also put me on the list of people who don't like green bell peppers- they're actually unripe peppers.

R81, for all cooks looking to try to make Thai food for the first time, follow Pailin at Hot Thai Kitchen (she's sort of like a Thai Maangchi). She's thorough and her recipes rock.

For the spicy food fans, I recommend buying "gochugaru." It's basically crushed red chile peppers (the kind you put on pizza) without the seeds and crushed to a finer consistency.

Gochugaru is a Korean ingredient. It's not expensive and, frankly, it's not that hot. It has a nice red color.

[quote]Why do people like large cocks when they hurt so much?

Small cocks are the ones that hurt.

And chillies enhance flavour.

R94 An irritated, swollen and “burning” asshole from very spicy food is a real thing! It happens when the food passes back out of you and reaches the skin surrounding your sphincter (duh). It’s uncomfortable, but it goes away rather quickly. If anything it’s a weird reminder of how the insides of your body have no nerve endings (or, different kinds).

Once when I was making tortilla soup I got the recipe wrong and switched the called for 5/1 jalapeño/habanero to 1/5 jalapeño/habanero peppers. Oops. I had no idea how hot they were. I had made everything from scratch and gone all out. You could taste that it was good but one spoonful of the broth, it was so spicy you had to just sit there and deal with an extremely burning mouth for 30 minutes. It was excruciating. My partner refused to even taste it. I knew I had to toss it but since I’d gone to so much trouble I kept it on the stove and kept going in and tasting it throughout the day, over and over. The spicyness was unreal and painful in the mouth and throat. But I got addicted to tasting it and kept going back for spoonful after spoonful. I ended up eating a lot of it. By that evening I swear I was high! I felt incredibly clear-headed and energetic. My mental and physical state had definitely been affected by the hot peppers. I indeed had the “hot poop” thing the next day, but felt incredible for like 24 hours.

It hurts coming out, huh?

No r105 It does hurt most of us, just you twats who whine at everything, it's all in your head, or ass in your case. It amazes me how you can tell someone their ass burns.

{quote}French cuisine is the world's best cuisine. It is never spicy in the sense people are using here, although it can be peppery. French cuisine is also rarely garlicky (with a few exceptions), despite the stereotype. Neither hot spices nor intense garlic are subtle, and good French cooking is always about subtlety...

[quote]...I don't understand people who claim that food has to be hot or it's "too bland". That shows as little culinary sophistication as disliking any "spicy" food.

R90, it is quite possible to like cuisines characterized by subtlety and cuisines characterized by bolder flavors. I have French friends who cook well; I live next door to France and spend some time there; and I genuinely like French food. But if I had no choice but to eat 'the world's best cuisine,' I would become bored and long for foods from other places, both subtle and bold cuisines. I would want Swedish, Greek, Italian, Portruguese, Spanish, Greek, Swiss, English, Hungarian, Turkish, Indian, Lebanese, Moroccan foods, Westernized Chinese, Thai, Malasian, to name a few obvious choices. I can appreciate the layered subtle flavors of a very mild French dish one day and on the next appreciate something bold with intense flavors and bold seasonings that reveal themselves one after another. Liking one sort of flavor profile doen't mean that I hate all others.

Of course there are assholes who carry around a bottle of sriracha or some seeringly hot hot sauce because Hasselback potatoes or a Shake Shack burger or the finest cut of steak or packet of gummibears wouldnt be the same without 'a little kick.' There are also people here who recoil at the idea of anything the least seasoned outside their sphere of experience. On Datalounge any 'foods I hate' thread quickly turns up some people who detest garlic and onions, in any way, in anything, not for some medical reaction but because they don't like the taste. How do they fucking live? Tiny bottles of creamed carrots?

R94 aka R108 is a twat with an unfeeling, uncaring asshole. Why don't you STFU and stop speaking for everyone.

r90 The MYTH about French cuisine is very Anglo-centric one since the Brits traditionally have such a shit food they considered their next door neighbor as some sort of gastronomic paradise.

As far as European cuisines Italian and Spanish are superior compared to the frogs.

[quote]and God knows it hurts coming out.

Is it weird that I've never had this problem? I eat a lot of spicy food too (I love it). I feel like people are always joking about the after effects, but it's never happened to me.

I stopped appreciating really hot or spicy foods once I understood their origins. Usually cultures in hotter regions of the world that did not have forms of refrigeration for meat had to use spices to cover up the taste of rancid meat. They usually had to cook it for hours and add spices and heat to cover up the bad taste - India, Nigeria, Caribbean, Thai, Mexican. So now that we have refrigeration, spices are a very easy way to cover up low quality, tasteless or even bad meat. I was always grossed out by this diner in NYC that every Sunday advertised their "Lobster Fra Diavolo." We all know a fishmonger's last delivery is usually Thursday, so that lobster had been sitting around a while before Sunday came when they covered it up with hot flavors. Seafood is the last thing you should cover up with anything. Its freshness is the whole point.

I really doubt that Rick Bayless of PBS and Chicago's Frontera Grill serves red mole sauce to disguise rancid meat. If you don't like spicy food, you do you. But I wouldn't make assumptions about restaurants that serve spicy food unless they failed a restaurant inspection or there are indications of unsafe practices.

Spicy is different than 'hot' - Spices add flavor, tabasco sauce adds nothing but heat.

I have a brother-in-law who loves to prove he can eat tabasco or pour Red Hot on everything. I doubt he's actually tasted real food in years.

R90- I bet you're the type that says- If you are not like me and don't consider French Cuisine superior to all other cuisines then you are not sophisticated about food.

I prefer Italian food any day over French food.

[quote]and God knows it hurts coming out.

[quote]Is it weird that I've never had this problem? I eat a lot of spicy food too (I love it). I feel like people are always joking about the after effects, but it's never happened to me.

There are some DL-ers who will use any excuse for a stealth scat thread.

R114 I was talking about the ORIGINS of spicy and hot food, not what is currently done - as I stated in my first sentence. That's where a lot of cuisines today have their roots. For instance Indian food is cooked for a very long time and uses strong spices and heat. I am sure the meat is good nowadays, but the initial flavor profiles were born out of what I said above. However, restaurants today are known to spice things up to mask other things. Any seafood "fra diavolo" is an example of this. There is no way a restaurant would spend a ton of money on good seafood only to obliterate it's delicate flavor. They are doing that to mask the poor quality or the age of it.

Hot foods remind me of what I learned in acting school that just as anger is the cheapest form of emotion, spicy hot foods are the cheapest form of flavor.

It's very easy to get someone mad than it is to make them laugh. The impulses to anger are pretty universal where as a sense of humor is much more particular. Destroying someone's mouth and taste with heat and spice is pretty easy whereas extracting the natural flavor of an ingredient and making it good is much more complex and difficult.

That's why I like and think Japanese and Italian cuisines are very interesting. They rely on the purity of the ingredients for the enjoyment of the meal. They strive to grow and use the purist ingredients in cooking. And it's a fallacy that Italian, Italians use a lot of garlic. They don't. They put a clove in the oil, heat it up and then remove it. They don't put 40 cloves in a spaghetti sauce like their Italian counterparts.