Gluttons for Punishment Gather - 'Chili Hheads' Revel in Pain of Peppers at North Market

By: Holly Zachariah and Tom Dodge
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Chris Sharma and stepson Dave Graham, 11, of Columbus, drink milk to try to block the heat after tasting hot-pepper sauces at CaJohns Fiery Foods at the North Market festival.

Marc Turner licked the tiny drop of brown goo from the spoon and turned to the man standing beside him at the North Market's Fiery Foods Festival yesterday.

He wanted to say that the hot sauce was good, but when he opened his mouth to speak, the sound that came out was something between a croak and a hoarse whisper.

Turner cleared his throat, then tried again.

"That's drop-kicking me in the pants right about now," he finally managed to get out.

"You know what's happening?" said Jeff Stevenson, the man who founded Crazy Uncle Jester's hot-sauce company out of Dayton. "Your vocal cords are spasming, that's what."

Stevenson is the one who had just given Turner the sample of "The Jester," the hot-sauce concentrate he makes from habanero peppers.

Stevenson says it takes 100 pounds of habaneros to produce 8 fluid ounces of the stuff. He says the concentrate rates 4 million units on the Scoville scale, which is used to gauge the hotness of a chili pepper. (By comparison, a typical green jalapeno rates about 5,000).

Turner, 41, of Westerville, wiped the tear from his eye and the sweat from his forehead, thanked Stevenson and made his way to the next booth to find more samples at the North Market's seventh-annual Fiery Foods Festival.

He was one of hundreds of people who couldn't seem to get enough. The hotter the better, it seemed.

And these lovers of all things hot -- chili heads, they are called -- are not shy about their obsession.

There was a grown man wearing a necklace made of plastic chili peppers, and a woman with red-pepper earrings that lit up and blinked. A 10-year-old girl sported a T-shirt with a chili on it that read "one hot mama."

Quite simply, it is an addiction. At least, that's what Columbus anesthesiologist Joe Levinson says.

"The love of hot and spicy foods is fascinating if you study the science of it. It's biological," Levinson said. He runs www.thehotzone online.com, a Web site for all things, well, hot. He also judged yesterday's amateur salsa and hot-sauce competitions.

He says capsaicin, the component in peppers that makes them hot, offers a natural high.

John Dailey, a 47-year-old from the North Side, couldn't agree more.

He sampled "The Jester" sauce, too. He said his head tingled, and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead.

"It scatters the synapses in your brain," he said.

What does that mean?

"It means it is ridiculous, crazy, insane. It's a buzz, man."

But wait, there's more.

"It's endorphins, you know. Like a runner's high without having to run. You don't even think clearly. Your mind just scatters."

He went back for seconds.


hzachariah@dispatch.com