Feeling the Bern: Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food

[RufusTFirefly]

In experiments conducted on 97 test subjects, Byrnes found a significant correlation between people who scored high on a “sensation seeking” scale and people who liked the burn. (Examples of questions that determined “sensation seeking” included “I would have enjoyed being one of the first explorers of an unknown land” and “I like a movie where there are a lot of explosions and car chases.”)
...

The puzzle starts to take shape. Personality: risk-taking immigrants on the move. Economics: a cheap and easy-to-grow option for adding flavor to a constrained diet. Weather and culture: a hot and humid climate, and yin and yang medical philosophy. Taken together, we see the formation of a culture, the beginning of an identity.

The final stroke cementing this modern act of identity-formation may not have arrived until the Sino-Japanese War, when the elite classes of China, fleeing to Sichuan from both the Communists and Japanese, found themselves in precisely the same kind of dire economic straits as those refugees who had immigrated to Sichuan centuries earlier. Then they too began to turn to the cheap, spicy, peasant fare that the lower classes had inadvertently nurtured into one of China’s great cuisines.

From Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food: How the chili pepper got to China.

[stone space]

1. I'm feeling the Byrnes

Byrnes found a significant correlation...

[tk2kewl]

2. Some revolutionaries prefer their lunch a little more bland

[RufusTFirefly]

4. Haha! I remember this scene. I love it

Reminds me of the Monty Python skit where extraterrestrials order something like a million kilts from humble tailor Angus Podgorny. Angus doesn't question the order (little does he realize that Britain is on the verge of being invaded by a race of Scotsmen.) He's just thrilled to have the business.

[thereismore]

3. Hillary carries a bottle of hot sauce in her purse. Probably the same one since 2008. nt