If ingesting weaponized capsaicin doesn’t appeal to you it’s probably for the best that you spent the day at Science World

Peppers, like most living things, don’t want to be eaten. Some mutation in an ancestor of the Capsicum genus caused the plant’s descendants to produce a chemical compound that, not to put too fine a point on it, does bad things to mammals. A seemingly-perfect defense.

But the unfortunate plant didn’t realize the subconscious masochistic undercurrent in the psyche of one mammal: the mammal that would eventually organize and industrialize. This was a fatal mistake. That undercurrent leads us to consume these plants, in spite of their evolutionary efforts, in unprecedented numbers.

Some evolutionary biologist once speculated that deciduous trees in New England were being selected for colourful leaf pigments. Similarly, production of Capsicum still gives peppers an advantage because we aid their reproduction by farming them. (Their genes care not for freedom.)

PS: You’re nuts.