Why is the heat you feel from eating horseradish different than the heat you feel from eating hot sauce?
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The best explanation I can give it that there are various degrees of spice. You have earthy, pungent, chili “heat”, sweet, astringent(sour), and a few others. The horseradish belongs to more of the pungent side like wasabi, garlic, or horseradish. They have a different sensation and I believe it’s from the different chemical compounds. For chili they have one called capsaicin which is where the “heat” in the chili spice comes from.
Well, the heat feel different between the two because the two compounds are activating different receptors on different neurons, leading to a different sensation when eating them. For example, capsaicin activates the same neutrons that are dedicated to detecting high temperate. Not just warm, but hot temperatures. This is why you sweat so much when eating hot peppers!
Hot peppers contain capsaicin, a chemical which “tricks” heat sensitive nerve endings in your mouth and causes those nerves to send a fake “this is hot” signal. More capsaicin equals more spicy.
Horseradish and wasabi (although to be honest you may have never eaten real wasabi, commercially available wasabi paste is usually just horseradish with green food colouring) anyway horseradish has a completely different spicy chemical, alllyl isothiocyanate, which is also responsible for spiciness in mustard. You feel this more in your sinus as the vapors are released when you consume horseradish and they rise up inside the back of your pharynx where it interacts with TRPA1 nerve endings and sends a “pain” signal
Garlic has yet another spicy chemical, allicin.
Black pepper has piperine.
Because their spiciness comes from two different chemicals! We call them both “heat” because they both kind of burn, but that’s a big generalization. They’re two different flavours. It’s like saying “Why is the fruitiness of a strawberry different from the fruitiness of a cherry?”
Hot-sauce hot comes from capsaicin, a thick oily liquid. It activates pain receptors, not taste buds. We call the sensation “burning” because to your brain it actually registers as burning, not as a flavour. The thick oiliness is also why hot sauce heat can linger longer than horseradish heat.
Horseradish and wasabi get their spiciness from “allyl isothiocyanate”, which is a volatile (thin and easily evaporating) liquid. That’s why horseradish heat gets into your nose and sinuses so easily – it’s evaporating from your mouth. It’s also why it doesn’t stay in your mouth as long as the thick oily hotsauce-spice.
https://www.pepperscale.com/pepper-heat-vs-horseradish-heat/
Interesting reading all the explanations.
When I eat hot sauce, I only feel a heat on my tongue.
When I eat horseradish, I feel an intense burning-tingling sensation simultaneously in my nose and in the back of my head. I can’t explain why I love it, but I do.
I would tell a five year old that jalapeños burn your mouth and horseradish burns your nose. Then, after the inevitable “why” I would tell them that jalapeños and horseradish are just made of different stuff. After the next “why” I would tell them that if you mix the two it’ll cause an explosion, so Mother Nature wants to keep you from eating both at the same time. Since we know r/kidsarefuckingstupid, hilarity would probably ensue.
I’m now both a liar and a terrible person.
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I feel like most people got too complicated where a kid wouldn’t understand. Wasabi/Horseradish activate the same cold receptors in the tongue that are present throughout your body and they usually respond to temps lower than 17° Celsius. Hot sauce is the opposite, and activates receptors in your tongue that imitate Hot sensations. Wasabi/horseradish: Cold. Hot sauce: hot.
Edit: These are all great comments and very scientific, but no other comment mentioned how horseradish/wasabi activate the same receptors and painful cold temperatures do. I hope you guys get a chance to read this so more people know!
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