When it comes to food, what we think of most is hot pot with red oil.
Spicy seems to have become a standard for young people. It is said that people who do not know how to eat spicy food can only find one of the few dishes that can be eaten from a table of delicious food when they have a meal with friends. For young people nowadays, spicy is not worth fearing, but not spicy is worth fearing.
However, we also know that spicy is not a sense of taste, but pain. In that case, why are we still not happy with spicy?
hot
When it comes to spicy, the first thing we think of is chili. Like other plants, in order to spread its own seeds, peppers will also grow flesh, which will be excreted by other animals by pecking their seeds, and then take root and sprout.
However, mammals are not a kind of organism that can help them spread their offspring. The reason is that the digestive system of mammals can destroy the activity of their seeds, making the germination rate of seeds lower. In order to prevent mammals from eating their hard-grown fruits, peppers have retained capsaicin during their evolution.
Capsaicin is actually a compound that can bind to the human body’s TRPV-1 receptor. TRPV-1 receptor is a protein responsible for sensing temperature. When it is combined with capsaicin, it will erroneously transmit the information of the tongue burned to the brain, and the brain will order the secretion of endorphins in order to relieve the pain. Promote the secretion of dopamine, and the effect of dopamine is similar to adrenaline, which can be highly exciting and happy in a short period of time.
Therefore, when we eat hot peppers, our mood will be very happy, and this pleasure will stimulate us to eat more hot peppers, and this will stimulate the brain to secrete endorphins again, and so on. It will make us addicted to chili.
Each person’s acceptance of chili is different, which mainly depends on the individual’s innate factors and acquired training. If a person eats chili often, then it will gradually increase the valve perceiving capsaicin, which makes him need to take more. Too much capsaicin, the brain will release the corresponding endocrine.
In fact, TRPV-1 receptors are not only distributed on the human tongue, but also on our skin and mucous membranes. When this affects, we not only perceive the existence of hotness through the tongue, but also on the skin. , Even the buttocks can perceive the spicy taste, which is why when we eat hotter food, the buttocks feel very uncomfortable when we go to the bathroom at night.
Why is spicy so popular?
Although spicy food has now become one of the most common dishes on the table, spicy food has not been spread for a long time. The reason is related to people’s ability to preserve food.
In the past, the nobles monopolized a lot of social wealth. They had enough food to obtain enough fresh ingredients. The fresh ingredients themselves tasted very delicious. Therefore, the tastes pursued by the nobles were basically the taste of the ingredients themselves. Spicy.
Even in areas where spicy taste is more prevalent, people in the upper class do not eat spicy food and think that eating spicy food is a common habit. Because civilians cannot obtain fresh ingredients, and the local ingredients are not well preserved, the food that has been kept for a long time has a rotten taste. In order to cover up the rotten taste, the locals will use chili to cover up the taste of the ingredients themselves. Over time, eating or not eating chili has become the dividing line between the upper class and the common people. Even if a small part of the upper class likes to eat spicy food, they dare not openly eat spicy food.
to sum up
The reason why we like spicy food is that, on the one hand, spicy food can stimulate the secretion of dopamine and make us happy; on the other hand, spicy food can be combined with other spices to create a more complex and stimulating blend. The food is appetizing.
