Red Hot Chili Peppers

No, not the group. I can't talk about work here, but it has occurred to me that I can share some of the useless information I aquire while researching for the educational program I write for. The way I find topics to write about is I get on the internet and put something in the search engine like "vegetables" or "health topics" and then I look for key words that I might be able to run with. Today I was researching an idea I had to write about vegetables states have adopted as their symbols. For instance: The Utah state vegetable is the Spanish sweet onion, and Ohio's state beverage is tomato juice. Interesting, eh? When I came across the pepper as New Mexico's, it gave me an idea to write about peppers. Being an English major, I, of course, took a lot of English classes. One of my favorites was called "Food in Literature." We read books like Off Side (P.I. Pepe Carvalho is also an amateur chef) and Death in Venice (we had to write a paper on what the main character would eat), stories like "Babette's Feast," and watched films like "Tampopo" (Japanese for Dandelion), which was all about the quest--Indiana Jones style--for the perfect noodle (ramen). As I was doing this research today, I remembered something the professor had said about peppers: That their potency was measured in so-called "scoville units." They dilute a pepper with water until it gives no burning sensation. The amount of water needed is what determines how hot it is. The bell pepper is the base measurement, coming in at zero scoville units. So here are the contenders and how hot they are in scoville units:

0-100....................Bell and Sweet Peppers
500-1000..............New Mexican Peppers
1000-2500............Ancho, Pasilla and Cascabel Peppers
2500-5000............Jalapeno and Mirasol Peppers
5,000-15,000........Serrano
15,000-30,000......de Arbol Peppers
30,000-50,000......Cayenne and Tabasco Peppers
50,000-100,000....Chiltepin Peppers
100,000-350,000..Scotch Bonnet and Thai Peppers
200,000-577,000..Habanero Peppers

But that's not all. The chemical in peppers that makes them hot is called capsaicin. It is so hot that lab workers have to wear full protective suits including masks when working with pure capsaicin. One lab worker accidentally inhaled some. He said it won't kill you, but it makes you wish you were dead. It comes in at 16 million scoville units.