You might be aware that the record for the world’s hottest pepper belongs to the Carolina Reaper whose Scoville Heat Unit averages at 1,641,000 and was recognized globally per Guinness World Records in 2017. But do you know the journey behind this creation? Do you know how it took a man 8 to 10 years to stabilize a cross breed of said pepper and have a geneticist and a chemist involved, a chemistry lab to verify the statistical average of the SHUs, and the larger story behind it? Well, Ed Currie or “Smokin” Ed is the man you have to thank! He’s a chilly breeder based out of Fort Mills, South Carolina and the founder and owner of The PuckerButt Pepper Company, which has over 5,00,000 pepper plants that produce peppers considered to be the hottest in the entire world.
Ed Currie’s now infamous Carolina Reaper was a crossbreed between a pepper he took from Pakistan and one from the Saint Vincent Island in the Caribbean. But Ed’s fascination with hot peppers came out of a dark phase of his life. Ed was a party animal in his college years and was addicted to drugs and alcohol. One fine morning, having had enough of the lifestyle he was leading, he checked himself into a rehab facility by himself, where he successfully completed a substance-abuse program. In the 90s, he moved to South Carolina to be close to his parents and that is when his knowledge and love for chillies found wings. He began growing his own peppers in his backyard and experimenting with crossbreeds. Soon, Ed was raising 800 of some of the hottest pepper plants in his home and also at the homes of his family, friends and neighbours. Ed turned these chillies into hot sauces, salsas, mustards, jellies & snacks and gave them out for free. He researched, experimented and turned his love for chillies into viable products that everyone enjoyed and kept coming back for more. Seeing him do so well at this newfound pursuit of his, his wife, Linda floated the idea of opening a full-fledged farm in the early 2000s and the rest was history. Now, PuckerButt has a turnover of more than a million dollars in annual revenue and is the biggest organic pepper farm in the United States.
Ed views all of this as a happy accident. After leaving his degenerate lifestyle behind, Ed still wanted to keep on partying, and in his view the hot chillies could surely help one achieve that buzz without actually hurting oneself beyond repair. He was studying about the indigenous tribes around the equator, and realized how none of the population seem to have died of cancer or heart disease. The common thread he found was that capsicum was in all their meals and the active ingredient for the sensation of spiciness, capsaicin, can be found in varying amounts in different chillies.
The human tongue could identify the five elements of taste- salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami but there’s no receptor in our taste buds to identify spiciness, because it isn't a flavour. Instead, it is a sensation and the compounds in capsaicin produce a burning sensation when it comes into contact with the human tissue. When we ingest something deemed to be spicy, it sends a message to our brains and tricks it into thinking we’re being burned which in turn, responds by releasing endorphins and dopamine, which is the body’s coping mechanism to relieving pain. Put two and two together, and after the burning sensation subsides, one is left with a euphoric feeling that many would describe as a “high.”
But beyond the thrill, Ed is big on the anti-cancer properties of capsaicin which causes certain cancer cells to undergo apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Studies show that hot peppers have the power to make cancer cells self-destruct. But like many holistic remedies, the evidence behind the cancer-fighting properties of capsaicin isn’t solid enough to use it for actual medical treatment. But if you’re to believe Ed, he’d attest based off of his studies on the equatorial population and on the knowledge that is already out there, that spicy food, is in fact, good for you!