The witnesses required for this attempt were locals who were randomly approached and asked to participate.

Moreover, many passers-by stopped to watch the attempt. Gregory Foster, from California, US, created the record for the fastest time to eat three Carolina Reaper chilies at the Seaport Shopping Center in Downtown San Diego, as per Guinness World Records. The attempt for the record took place on Saturday, 11 December 2021.

Speaking of the same, recently, the Guinness World Records has shared about a man who broke the record by eating three Carolina Reaper chili peppers in 8.72 seconds. The organization's social media handle leaves no stone unturned to follow this vision. WARNING: it has scenes of vomiting and general debility.The Guinness Book of World Records is a platform that recognizes unique milestones and unseen talents that deserve recognition by showcasing them to a global audience. The climax of this post is a video of Marshall Terry, a radio personality at WFAE in Charlotte, eating just a slice of Currie’s überpepper.

Still, pepper aficionados adhere to the Scoville scale. Now, however, science can do a much better job, measuring capsaicin via liquid chromatography. The garden variety jalapeño, in contrast, has a Scoville rating of only 3500-8000. So, for example, the hottest peppers in this table below can have their extract diluted five million times and still have the heat detectable. The “heat” of peppers has traditionally been measured in “ Scoville units,” a rather subjective procedure in which pepper extract is diluted in sugar water by various amounts, and then the dilution in which the heat can just be detected is its Scoville rating. By binding to the VR1 receptor, the capsaicin molecule produces the same sensation that excessive heat or abrasive damage would cause, explaining why the spiciness of capsaicin is described as a burning sensation. The resulting depolarization of the neuron stimulates it to signal the brain. VR1, which can also be stimulated with heat and physical abrasion, permits cations to pass through the cell membrane and into the cell when activated. First cloned in 1997, VR1 is an ion channel-type receptor. Capsaicin, as a member of the vanilloid family, binds to a receptor called the vanilloid receptor subtype 1 (VR1). The burning and painful sensations associated with capsaicin result from its chemical interaction with sensory neurons. Ed, of course, is simply increasing the content of capsaicin by artificial selection, demonstrating once again that nearly every trait in animals and plants has genetic variability.Īccording to Wikipedia, capsaicin binds to sense receptors that produce the burning sensation: It’s thought to have evolved in wild chili peppers as a deterrent to mammalian predation, which destroys the seeds (bird predation doesn’t do that since the birds pass the seeds, dispersing them, which is what the plant “wants”). The stuff that makes peppers hot is the compound capsaicin, here from the Wikipedia entry: For comparison, a regular jalapeño is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500-5,000 Scoville. Calloway says Ed’s Guinness pepper, on average, measures 1.5 million Scoville. The one Ed has to beat, the Trinidad Scorpion “Butch T” from Australia, measures 1.4 million Scoville. We’ve got everything,” Currie says.Ī pepper’s heat is measured in Scoville units. He even has security installed in the backyard. Guinness World Records officials are looking at the pepper to see if it is indeed the world’s hottest.Ĭurrie works as a banker by day, but peppers are always on his mind. So I knew I was on the right path, you know,” Currie says.Ĭurrie tests different combinations of food, water, and mineral intake to see which one creates the hottest pepper. “The first time we tried it, out of the six of us…four puked. Here’s how Ed Currie knew he was getting somewhere with his potentially record-breaking hot pepper: What gives meaning to his life is his attempt to produce the world’s hottest pepper. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a man named Ed Currie is on a quest.

Man eats carolina reaper pepper