Most of us enjoy a little spice in our food, but what about the hottest pepper ever?
By consuming the stomach-churning vegetable, a man from Southern Carolina who grew the now-famous plant has broken a record globally.
However, after tasting his own creation, inventor Ed Currie was left "groaning in pain," so even someone accustomed to intense heat might want to pass on this one.
Called simply Pepper X, Guinness World Records said on October 9 that the hot vegetable was the hottest in the world, surpassing the previous record-holder, the California Reaper, which he also created.
Youtube
When comparing the peppers' Scoville Heat Units, it actually pretty well incinerated its predecessor.
To put things in perspective, the Carolina Reaper has a clocking of 1.64 million units, whereas a habanero typically weighs about 100,000 units.
But Pepper X—a hybrid of a Reaper and an unidentified pepper from a friend in Michigan—has blazed to the top of the list with an estimated 2.69 million units.
In contemporary times, Pepper X's heat rivals weaponry with police pepper spray containing about 1.6 million units.
Bear spray, averaging around 2.2 million units, is potent enough to deter most grizzlies, as reported by ABC 7.
Currie has cautioned people that the pepper produces an "immediate, brutal heat" for those who are still keen to try it.
He said to ABC 7 that after consuming the full pepper, the effects left him in excruciating pain.
"I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours. Then the cramps came," Currie revealed, adding: "Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain."
AP
The burning feeling, for those who failed high school chemistry, is caused by capsaicin, a member of the same family as arsenic.
Our brains still see it as a threat even though it isn't as dangerous and sends out a scorching signal to alert us to its presence.
Currie is surprisingly one of only five persons who have consumed an entire Pepper X.
However, he claims that after working on Pepper X for ten years and the California Reaper before that, he has developed a "tolerance" to such heat.
Ironically, though, he has had difficulty profiting from his inventions because numerous goods have been made using the Reaper without his permission; for this reason, Pepper X is kept a closely guarded secret.
Pepper X seeds and pods will not be sold, according to a press statement; the only way to determine if you can tolerate the spice is to try specific recipes.
"Everybody else made their money off the Reaper. It's time for us to reap the benefits of the hard work I do," he said.
Hopefully, he can outdo the competition!
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