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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

The article is missing a key point. I love chillies, ginger, horseradish, etc. And sure, I'm an adrenaline junky, and sometimes too macho. But I have learned a key thing about eating hot food: It's far more fun if you ramp up the burn gradually. The pain transforms into something else, more like pleasure. Just as it does with sex. And I do believe that other flavors taste better on top of the burn.

Milk is a decent antidote for overexposure. Better is yogurt. And even better is yogurt with mint and cucumber, one of the standard raitas. Or yogurt and banana.

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There's this joke that may have originated in a Cheech and Chong movie ("Up in Smoke") that you should have ice cream after eating anything really spicy. The idea is that a day later when your spicy meal is making its exit, you can say "come on ice cream"[1] expecting the ice cream to cool things down for you.

About a thirty minute drive from me is Sunni Sky's[2] ice cream in Angier, NC. They have a flavor called Cold Sweat[3] which includes among other things ghost pepper extract.

They require you to sign a waiver[4] before letting you taste it.

Then they ask you if you want the baby taste or the real taste. Assuming you go for the real taste (as I did), in addition to handing you a mouthful of Cold Sweat, they are standing by with a second spoonful of vanilla for putting out the fire in your mouth.

Now I like really spicy food. I'll order things as hot as they'll let me in most Thai restaurants. So I was able to finish the full size taste of Cold Sweat they gave me, but there is no possible way I could have eaten a full scoop.

After finishing my taste, I glance up at their menu and notice a flavor called "Exit Wound." Upon asking what it is, they tell me it's about twice as hot as Cold Sweat.

Let me just say about these flavors: ice cream won't save you this time[5].

The flavor has made the local news[6] and Food TV[7].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwyQoLtqB0s

[2] http://www.sunniskys.com

[3] http://www.coldsweaticecream.com

[4] http://www.coldsweaticecream.com/Cold_Sweat_Waiver.htm

[5] http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9vXAih2HI

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8oy_zYRTZ0

Yeah, I love dark chocolate and chipotle ice cream. It tastes a little like mole. But I don't get all macho about it. I just like the taste.

I remember reading that dairy-based "antidotes" such as milk or yoghurt aren't ideal, especially as you get spicier, and that a better option is sugary water. Unfortunately, I don't quite remember the chemical/physical justification for this; something along the lines of the fats in dairy products just coating the spices in your mouth temporarily, while sugar actually absorbs and washes it away.

Mythbusters did a show on it (didn't personally watch it) and milk came out on top for them. Capsaicin is fat-soluble, so the lipophilic casein in milk coats it apparently. The sugar water claim seems to be because they use it when measuring Scoville units, but seems odd to me. Soluble in alcohol too.

lipophilic and fat soluble mean the same thing.

I'm surprised to see all the pepper fanatics chugging milk. I'm a spice wuss and know nearly zero about the stuff. But, as soon as I read that Scoville units were based on sugar water, I started using sweet stuff to cancel the burn. Works great. Whereas milk hardly helps at all.

That makes sense. Indian meals typically end with insanely sweet desserts, and sweet tea with milk.

milk is sugary water

Despite the downvotes, this is an accurate statement. There are 13g of sugar in 8oz of milk, which is half of what you'd get from a Coca Cola but still a fair bit of sugar.

Protein! And fats, for that matter; there's much more to milk than sugar.

I didn't say it didn't also have fats and protein. I said it has quite a bit of sugar.

It actually has more sugar than fat or protein. Quite a bit more.

If you dump 13g of sugar into 8oz of water, do you not have sugary water? If you then dump in 8oz of protein and fat, does it cease being sugary water?

Yes, sugar. But it's lactose, which is much less sweet on a mass basis than sucrose, or even glucose.

"Sugary water" is pejorative because it's just sugary water; so I'd say that the answer to your second question is no.

In this context the question is whether "sugary water" is better for removing heat. It's not pejorative to point out that at its core, milk is also sugary water. It's not a health statement. It's a comment about the supposed higher effectiveness of sugary water.

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