Gregory ‘Iron Guts’ Barlow holds the Guinness record for most Carolina reaper Peppers eaten in a single sitting, 160. The Carolina Reaper is the world’s hottest chili pepper, by far.

Melbourne-based Greg Barlow doesn’t even like eating chili peppers or hot sauce, but he loves the attention it earns him, and he’s willing to put his stomach on the line for it. After getting acquainted with the burning sensation of eating one or more Carolina Reapers, Barlow approached the League of Fire, an organization that ranks the most badass chili eaters on the planet in various categories. One of the toughest challenges any competitive hot pepper eater can undertake is eating the most Carolina Reaper peppers in one sitting, but Iron Guts Barlow went straight for it, in his quest to become world champion.

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Doctors in New York recently reported the case of a 34-year-old man who wound up in the hospital with severe headaches and neck pain after trying to eat a Carolina Reaper during a hot pepper eating competition.

The unnamed man reportedly started dry heaving immediately after sampling a Carolina Reaper pepper. It’s unclear whether he stopped after a few bites or finished the whole thing, but what we do know is that over the following days, he began experiencing intense headaches and neck pains that lasted only a few seconds. At one point, the pain became so hard to bare that he had to be taken to the emergency room.

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The Carolina Reaper has been the undisputed world’s hottest pepper for over 4 years now, but its days at the top are numbered. There’s a new kid on the block and it’s apparently twice as hot as the Reaper. This is “Pepper X”.

Pepper X is the brainchild of Smokin’ Ed Currie, “founder, president, mad scientist & chef of PuckerButt Pepper Company”, and the same man who created the now world famous Carolina Reaper. Apparently, he started working on this scorching hot chilli some 10 years ago, crossing various pepper variety and constantly upping the Scoville rating, to the point where it now scores a mouth burning 3.18 million Scoville units. To put that into perspective, Jalapenos are rated at between 10,000 – 20,000 units, while the current Guinness record holder for world’s hottest pepper, the Carolina Reaper, scores an average of 1.6 million units on the Scoville scale. So it’s safe to say that Pepper X is pretty hot.

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Despite what you might think, the world’s hottest chili pepper was created not by a Mexican or Indian farmer, but by a “hot”  British farmer.

Gerald Fowler grew the Naga Viper on his farm in  Cumbria, northern England, and got to a record level of spiciness by crossing three of the hottest varieties of chili, including  Bhut – Jolokia, the previous record holder.

There is a special way to measure their hotness. It’s not like someone tastes this babies. The heat of a chili pepper is measured using the Scoville Scale – the number of Scoville unites indicates the amount of capsaicin found in the chili, this being  what gives it’s spiciness. Bhuta – Jolokia reached a maximum of 1.001.304 units whereas the Naga Viper has 1.359.000.

In an interview for The Daily Mail, Mrs.Fowler confirmed : ‘It’s painful to eat. It numbs your tongue, then burns all the way down. It can last an hour, and you just don’t want to talk to anyone or do anything. But it’s a marvellous endorphin rush. It makes you feel great.’

What I find interesting is that he makes people vouch in writing for their sanity, before letting them taste his chili.

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