Hot sauce has many flavor profiles that offers different experiences for the taste buds. The trend in manufacturing follows the consumers desires and offers many varieties of hot sauces at many different heat levels Therefore, many hot sauce enthusiasts want to try every available hot sauce on the market…but will this ruin your taste buds?
Spicy food and hot sauces do not damage your taste buds but it could cause a “burning” sensation or “numbing” effect on the tongue and around the mouth area. The key component in hot peppers, capsaicin, actually has healing properties but it is not a flavor sensed by the taste buds. Your taste buds can change over time with age and bad habits like smoking tobacco.
Hot sauce and numbness
If you are reading this article, you have certainly dabbled in hot sauce consumption and more than likely tried hot sauces that rank in the millions on the Scoville scale. The tingling, burning, and numbness of extreme hot sauces feels as though there is direct damage to the taste buds, tongue, lips, and entire mouth area.
Your taste buds can temporarily swell and prohibit your ability to taste states Web MD but this sensation eventually goes away. If you eat extremely hot sauce with every meal and do not give yourself time to heal your sense of taste could diminish but this would take years and years of eating this type of hot sauce.
The numbness felt from consuming hot sauce does not negatively affect the taste buds and it will eventually go away
How does spice affect the palette?
Spiciness is not a direct sensation to the taste buds. According to Popular Science spice is not a taste but is a physical sensation that the nerve endings sense often associated with a burning sensation. However, there is also much debate that spice is NOW one of the 5 flavor profiles (6 if you count spice) that encompass all food flavors.
Each variety of hot pepper has a certain flavor profile associated with it. Often this flavor can be evident in the hot sauces made with it, but the spiciness of an extremely hot pepper can take over and the flavoring that can get lost. It is the flavor of the hot pepper and other ingredients in the hot sauce that is tasted and not the spiciness of the sauce itself.
Is spice a flavor profile?
There is some controversy in the culinary world whether or not spiciness is one of the food flavor profiles. There are five flavor profiles and all of them can be associated with certain types or brands of hot sauce. Salty, sweet, umami (savory), sour, and bitter all effect different areas of the taste buds and different areas of the mouth unlike spiciness.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information states that spice is not actually one of the five flavor profiles.
Do taste buds “taste” spice?
Certain flavor profiles affect specific areas of the tongue, but spiciness covers most of the tongue, lips, and mouth area. It is not concentrated on one area of the tongue like most flavors. The main compound in spicy food, capsaicin, does not have any flavor to it.
Does capsaicin have flavor?
Capsaicin is a flavorless compound. The flavor in a hot sauce comes from other ingredients like the hot peppers themselves or the spices added to recipes.
Taste buds or pain receptors
Taste buds are what is distinguishing different flavor profiles of hot sauce whereas pain receptors are what is communicating to the brain the effects of the spiciness. However, the pain receptors are located within cells of the taste buds.
Taste buds, hot sauce, time, and age
Time and age can have a negative effect on the taste buds, but hot sauce isn’t directly associated with this. Many consumers reach for condiments like hot sauce as their taste buds diminish but it primary due to the bold flavors of many hot sauces on the market today.
The Baby Boomer population is one of the largest consumers of hot sauce because they are reaching for new spicy flavors as their taste buds begin to fail with aging. Read more about hot sauce consumers in Who Eats Hot Sauce and Why: A Guide To Demographics.
Eating too much hot sauce
Eating too much of anything can have a negative effect on the human body. Consuming too much hot sauce is believed to cause heartburn but there isn’t any evidence supporting that it negatively ruins taste buds.
Hot sauce is one of the healthier condiments but it is the acidity that can have adverse affects on the body. A hot sauce that is lower in acidity can cause temporary inflammation and this can interfere with ability to taste food states Medical News Today. This is not permanent damage.
I can’t taste spice anymore!
Anyone who eats hot sauce regularly probably has a friend or relative who states “nothing is ever hot enough for me”. This is probably due to their tolerance level for hot sauce increasing and not so much their taste buds getting ruined by hot sauce.
Certain eating habits, smoking cigarettes, and drinking alcohol can all contribute to the lack of taste and this is often why many people eat hot sauce.