Hot stuff

Woody Allen once said that it isn't the venom of a rattlesnake that will kill you - it's his bad breath!

Well, here's news about a red hot chili pepper that actually can kill you.

From England comes the Dragon's Breath pepper, developed by Mike Smith at the University of Nottingham.  Don't try to eat it, though; it might be the last thing you ever have.

 You see, there is a thing called the Scoville Scale, which measures how much capsaicin a pepper has.

And as you know from watching commercials and Dr Oz, Capsaicin is a neuropeptide releasing agent selective for primary sensory peripheral neurons... an agent to control peripheral nerve pain.

The Scoville Scale says that Dragon's Breath rings up 2.48 million heat units, which completely blows the current record holder, the Carolina Reaper, out of the ballpark.  U.S. military pepper spray hits about 2 million on the scale.

It's almost as if one could make one's own personal pepper spray for self defense by loading some Texas Pete hot sauce into a water pistol, but you didn't hear that from me.

There is even a website for devotees of hot peppers. My favorite is a sauce someone bought me from T.J. Maxx, of all things. It was called Smokin' Tonsils, and they did!

But they look so tasty!

But from that website we learn that bell peppers, mainstays in the produce aisle at Try 'N' Save, have a recessive gene that blocks production of capsaicin,  habanero pepper is way down the scale (350,000 Scoville units) and the jalapeño pepper, which people think is a hot number, only registers 8,000 heat units.

Chances are, you won't find Dragon's Breath by the bagful at your grocery, but in no case should it be regarded as a food or condiment. Just ingesting it can put you in anaphylactic shock, so just stick to Texas Pete for your fried chicken, please. The real purpose of Dragon's Breath is as a topical numbing anesthetic for people who are allergic to regular anesthetic.

I love the intersection where food meets medicine.