What is Scoville Heat Unit? And Comparison between Samyang Noodle, Carolina Reaper, Thai Pepper and Cayenne Pepper

-via Pixabay by Free-Photos

Call it a trend if you like it, but eating spicy food has been one of the challenges people are doing nowadays. Even food which is not usually spicy, like chocolate is being made spicy due to how popular the trend is. In YouTube alone, you are going to find people doing insane challenges like eating raw Naga Jolokia. In Malaysia, people are challenging themselves with spicy Samyang noodle and Maggi Pedas Giler.

-Carolina Reaper via Skynews

Out of many challenges I observed, perhaps Carolina Reaper and Ghost Pepper are usually involved. However in Malaysia, challenges involving those peppers aren't as popular compared to challenges involving spicy instant noodle which was first made popular in 2014, I believe; by a YouTube channel 'Korean Englishman'.

The question now is, just how challenging is eating spicy instant noodle, especially the two I mentioned earlier; compared to eating Carolina Reaper? To begin, let us take a look at what makes spicy instant noodle spicy. Obviously it's not the noodle. In every spicy instant noodle which is intensely spicy, we are going to find chili oil which is made of capsaicin, an active component usually found in chili peppers that gives us that spicy sensation. Beware, capsaicin can cause a burning sensation on your skin and eye, handle your chili with care.

-Professor Wilber Lincoln Scoville via ushotstuff

To compare the spiciness level of each peppers, Wilber Scoville introduced a quantitative unit named after him, the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU). Basically, SHU is the amount of sugar-water needed to dilute a chili or pepper to a point it is no more spicy. For example, the SHU of  Samyang 2x Spicy Hot noodle is 8706 as written on its packaging, it means for 1 teaspoon of the noodle, blended (or perhaps 1 teaspoon of its chili oil, i'm not sure the SHU is for the whole noodle or the chili oil alone), we need about 8706 teaspoon of sugar water (42.91 litre) to dilute its spiciness to zero.

If we compare the Samyang noodle together with cayenne pepper (30,000-50,000 SHU) and thai pepper (50,000-100,000 SHU), the noodle is just about one tenth time as spicy. Just imagine how well we could do eating Carolina Reaper which is about 180 time more spicy than the Samyang noodle, madness.

Malaysian should be proud, we are used to eating thai pepper, jalapeno is nothing compared to it.