Why Do People Brag About Their Ability to Eat Spicy Food?

When I turned 8, I determined that my culinary palate had reached it’s peak. I had tried all there was to try and there wasn’t going to be anything better than pizza, chicken fingers, mac & cheese, burgers, and hot dogs. Almost 30 years later I’ve come to the conclusion that… I was absolutely right. To this day I continue to eat those clean, all-natural, healthy foods, just the way god intended.

For some reason I am constantly made fun of for my ‘childlike’ palate. Which never made sense to me. Sorry that I know what I like? I apologize for eating the best foods while you pretend broccoli and kale are delicious. Making fun of someone’s palate is like making fun of someone’s musical tastes. Why do you care what someone else listens to? For me, I discovered The Beetles, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones and Tool of food at an early age and kept going back to them. 

It is the same people that make fun of others about their palate, or lack thereof, that are overly braggadocios about their spice tolerance. How they can handle the spiciest of foods. They just love spicy food, and nothing is too spicy for them! These people wake up in the morning and pour hot sauce on their cereal, they do lines of ghost peppers for lunch, and make sweet passionate love to a jalapeño for dessert. They brag about how even Asian/Mexican restaurants are impressed with their ability to handle spice. 

To the people that brag about their ability to handle spice, I have one message for you… We don’t care. No one cares about your ability to eat spicy food, it doesn’t make you special or important. It isn’t a talent! It’s more likely a indication of some medical malady. Probably some sort of onset stroke or gastrointestinal disease. Your taste buds are awful at doing their job bud, you need a shit ton of flavor to even taste anything. Nothing to be proud of.

For those of you that need further explanation, I’ve come up with some more famous BBC’s analogies to help you out.

-> Opposite of Too Hot = Brain Freeze – The opposite of eating something hot/spicy is eating something cold, right? Imagine going around talking about how great you are at eating cold food, how you just love experiencing brain freeze and your tolerance is way better than everyone else. For me the uncomfortableness of eating something really hot is equivalent to getting brain freeze but it just last way longer, so why would anyone ever brag about it?

-> Your Workout = Your Spice Tolerance – It’s the same as bragging about how much you can bench or your CrossFit workout. No one cares. Some people are born genetically stronger. They can run faster or lift more weights or have normal palates and don’t need to put tabasco sauce on their nipples to feel something.

-> Like Lactose Intolerant – One of the worsts things about spicy-food-people is that they always want you to try how spicy their food is. Even if you protest, they need you to try it, and once you do and feel immensely uncomfortable, they say, “oh you think that is spicy?” Would you do the same thing to someone that is lactose intolerant? ‘Try this cheesecake, c’mon you’ll like it’. The comparison doesn’t end there because spicy food and being lactose intolerance both make for uncomfortable bathroom trips.

Long blog short, no one cares about your ability to eat spicy food.

P.S. I love the show Hot Ones, and I’d quit after the first or second wing.