Why does it help to eat bread and/or drink milk after eating spicy food?
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Milk works for three reasons:
* It is a liquid, so it washes away some of the spicy material.
* It has a lot of suspended fat, which coats your mouth surfaces and protects them to a small extent. Capsaicin is also fat-soluble, so this helps dissolve it.
* Casein, a family of proteins found in milk, tends to bind to capsaicin, further increasing its ability to wash lingering capsaicin away.
I’ve never heard of the bread thing. I suppose gluten might act the same way casein does? But I’ve never heard anything to substantiate that.
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