I choose to taste with attentiveness. Bite into a jalapeno. Nothing. Just the taste of a green pepper. Take another bite, and hit a seed. Suddenly heat hits the back of the throat, just a speck, like tickle of a cough, only this one feels like it’s going to close my throat down and I won’t be able to breathe. Curiously, it doesn’t go any further back than that, doesn’t even overwhelm the soft palate. Instead, it rushes forward, sending a feeling of warmth, then of burning down the right side and toward the front of the tongue. I think, that must be the taste buds, but that is because I have forgotten that heat isn’t a taste, it is a sensation, like pain. Then the heat gets on my lip, my lower lip, making it feel like it is puffing up in a blister.
After the bite that contained the seed, I go back and take another bite of just the flesh. Somehow bursting the seed has caused the flesh of the pepper to catch fire. This time the heat does not go straight down my throat, instead, it assaults the roof of my mouth—but only briefly. Once again, it courses down my tongue and hits my lips, this time making both the lower and the upper one feel as if they are chapped by over-exposure to the sun.
I have read that water is not a good antidote to the heat of capsaicin, and that one would be better off drinking milk or eating bread—something bland, containing carbs or fat—because these will block the capsaicin from binding to the pain receptors. Instead, I reason, mint is cool. It is supposed to be cool.
Mouth wash. So, I take a hit of this anti-cavity mouthwash. The burn starts at the tip of my tongue, not too severe, then a slight hit in the back of my throat, after which I feel it on the sides of my tongue, and under my tongue, where it seems to combine with a bitter taste. The whole thing dissipates in less than the time recommended for swishing the stuff around in my mouth to prevent cavities. Unlike the jalapeno, it doesn’t continue to smolder, and although its effect seems strong, it isn’t actually painful. What’s the element that makes this burn?
Researching this led me to a lot of message boards and “peer to peer” information sources. Many of these predate Wikipedia (floating, like antediluvian ghosts in cyberspace), and they remind you of why it’s important to know what the source of your information is. There are a lot of unsubstantiated opinions out there. They also remind me of the heated (no pun intended) discussions I used to have with my best friend, and longtime roommate (you know who you are), years ago. After one particularly impassioned argument—and I have no memory of what the bone of contention was—we both sheepishly admitted that neither of us had any factual information to back up our points of view. We then came to the mutual conclusion (again, based upon our feelings, not upon any statistical evidence), that all of our fiercest arguments centered on issues about which neither one of us was sufficiently informed.
So, many people suggested that mouthwash burns because it has alcohol in it, although others contended that most mouthwash actually did NOT have alcohol in it. I checked my bottle; mine did—actually, it’s around 40 proof, thus vying with the ginger liqueur we keep in the kitchen (which, incidentally, coats the tongue with a soothing warmth, followed by a slight frisson of a burn—I think that’s the ginger—but I digress). This idea that the more alcohol, the more burn. . . well, my personal experience doesn’t back that up. A very high proof vodka can taste dangerously—extremely dangerously—smooth going down. Then some people said that chlorhexidine was probably responsible for the burning sensation, but, although my very nonscientific Web surf turned up the information that this substance could possible cause chemical burns to the skin of premature babies, it actually is not present in the particular bottle of mouthwash I am currently sampling.
In researching the chemicals that are suspended in the alcohol that apparently provides the basis for my mouthwash, I see that there is one that is supposed to make my teeth stronger, one that is supposed to make the other ingredients dissolve better, at least one that is tough on dirt and stains (it’s also present in laundry detergent), several that are there to add the (supposedly) pleasing purple color, several there to sweeten it up, and several that are preserving the freshness, even after the bottle is open. I could have sworn that the burn comes from some sort of mint, but it isn’t listed. The experiment is inconclusive.
More exploration of the properties of mint, menthol, and mouthwash are necessary.
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