Chili Links and Lore

The great benefits of using chile peppers to enhance all aspects of your life...

How important is it for us to eat spicy food? Most Thai and Lao dishes are very spicy, if we don’t eat chili pepper or fish sauce, there seems to be something missing. Personally, I like to eat spicy food, the spicier the better. My mom also uses the leaves of the chili pepper as vegetable and put it into her dish, such as ‘oum kai’. Some of this interesting information about chili pepper below is from Kullastree Magazine by Phetrut Houphanyakit written in Thai language, translated by Nye.

Chili pepper is packed with all the vitamins and minerals, such as protein, calcium, zinc, beta-carotene, vitamin A, B1, B2, and C. 1 small chili pepper has more vitamin C than 1 lemon or orange. It also contains vitamin A, as much as 50% of the daily recommend dosage.

The origin of pepper was from Mexico and South America; the Latino brought it to Asia over 400 years ago. The red coloring of the pepper is called capsanthin, which sometimes is used for food coloring. The spicy portion is called capsaicin, which helps to increase your appetite, alleviate gas, and with blood circulation. If you’ve noticed, those that eat very spicy food, their face, eyes would turn red because of good blood circulation; you can extract this portion and turns it into medicine that could be used for headache, bloatedness, and skin disorders.

If you touch the chili pepper by accident and feel the burning sensation on your skin, you can use lemon or lime juice to wash out the area and this will alleviate the burning sensation. If you accidental eat chili pepper, you can drink milk because it has casein, which helps alleviate the spiciness. Pepper is also considered negative food diet; therefore, it’s good to eat spicy food.