‘So Spicy You Could Die’ – Could Montana Ban Spicy Food?

I fondly remember my weekly challenge of eating 8 spicy chicken wings at a local bar. Every Tuesday I would accept the challenge of eating 8 crispy chicken wings covered in concentrated Carolina Reaper hot sauce. I accomplished this mission every week for nearly an entire year. Learning each week that my stomach is NOT a big fan of EXTREME heat. Soon I became a regular user of Prilosec to battle heartburn.

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The Carolina Reaper pepper just recently got knocked off the top spot as the hottest pepper on the planet. Dishing out a whopping 2 million Scoville units of heat.

What is a Scoville unit?

According to Wikipedia,

The Scoville scale is a measurement of pungency (spiciness or "heat") of chili peppers and other substances, recorded in Scoville heat units (SHU). It is based on the concentration of capsaicinoids, among which capsaicin is the predominant component.

To put the measurements into perspective: A jalapeno has 8,000 Scoville units. Habanero pepper has 350,000. So you can start to understand just how HOT a Carolina Reaper can be.

The secret is capsaicin. That is the chemical in peppers that makes our brains think something is spicy. The higher the concentration of capsaicin, the hotter a pepper will be.

Recently, Denmark has announced that they are banning a certain Spicy Ramen Noodle product for being too spicy.

According to The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration

Ready-made noodle dishes that are marketed as extremely strong must no longer be sold because consumers and especially children risk acute poisoning. The products are sold under the names Samyang Buldak 3 x Spicy & Hot Chicken, Samyang Buldak 2 x Spicy & Hot Chicken and Samyang Buldak Hot Chicken Stew.

 

Much like the "One Chip Challenge" being banned, after a guy died, the Danish government isn't taking any chances with someone getting "acute poisoning" from spicy food.

If people really can die from spicy food, something tells me I should be in a pine box by now. If being "poisoned" by spicy food is true, could states in the US follow with their own bans?