This is the world's most powerful pepper, 540 times stronger than a classic jalapeño

Let's face it, we're a strange species. While our instinct should be to avoid all negative emotions, we enjoy watching horror movies in October, working out intensively despite aches and pains, and... eating spicy food, even if it makes us cry. Brands have focused all their marketing on the spiciness of their products, YouTube shows feature guests eating extremely spicy hot wings, and people like Ed Currie (prophetic name?) have even made it their mission to create the world's hottest chillies. This breeder has actually succeeded in his mission. Twice.

Pepper X dethrones the Carolina Reaper

The world's most powerful pepper has a name: Pepper X. It was developed by Ed Currie, the breeder behind the Carolina Reaper... the previous king of chillies!

The once-viral One Chip Challenge, the world's hottest chip that even killeda teenager, featured the Carolina Reaper. For the record, the 'spiciness' of a pepper is expressed in Scoville: the higher a pepper/sauce/chip is on the Scoville scale, the more likely it is to make you cry your eyes out and send you to the emergency room.

The Carolina Reaper, for example, was at the very top of the Scoville scale with 1.64 million SHUs (the unit of measurement for this scale). The Pepper X? According to Guinness World Records, it has an average of 2,693,000 SHU... Enough to wake the dead, ward off an over-aggressive bear and make even the greatest pepper experts suffer! By way of comparison, a jalapeño (a common Mexican pepper) has... around 5,000 SHU. It's a drag next to Pepper X.

Even Hot Ones' Sean Evans started stuttering

If you're a fan of spicy food, then you're probably familiar with Hot Ones. Broadcast on YouTube, this show presented by Sean Evans consists of a series of interviews during which... the guests (as well as the host), eat increasingly spicy hot wings.

To celebrate the official announcement of this new world record, Ed Currie was present on set and gave a little tasting. Known for his dazzling stamina, Sean Evans himself seems to have taken a beating!

Ed Currie is said to have spent around ten years designing this brand-new chilli, growing various varieties of chilli to obtain a particularly potent one. According to GuinnessWorld Records :

"Creating brand-new chilli varieties requires a great deal of patience. With first-generation plants carrying many of the characteristics of their parents, it can take several years for the desired characteristics to emerge through selective breeding, and it takes around 10 generations for hybrids to stabilize with predictable characteristics and consistent fruit."

This article was translated from Gentside FR

Read more:

⋙ Enjoy spicy food? This is what it says about your personality

⋙ Woman hospitalised with brain swelling after sniffing dangerously spicy peppers

⋙ Here's why your butt goes on fire after eating spicy food

Sources:

Guinness World Records: Pepper X dethrones Carolina Reaper as world’s hottest chilli pepper