Greg Foster is on a record-breaking hot streak.
The San Diego, California, hot sauce maker recently earned his third Guinness World Record within a year for his ability to rapidly ingest super-hot peppers.
For his latest feat, Foster on Sept. 17, 2022 ate 10 Carolina Reaper peppers in 33.15 seconds, the fastest time ever to consume that amount of the chilies, according to Guinness World Records, which announced the record Monday.
Carolina Reaper peppers aren’t just jalapeño-level hot; their heat averages about 1.6 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU). In comparison, the jalapeño hits 2,500 to 8,000 SHU. (Guinness also ranks the Carolina Reaper as the world’s hottest pepper.)
How’s it feel to devour a batch of peppers? “Like you’ve opened your mouth and instead of taking a drink from a fire hose, you’re taking a drink from a flamethrower,” Foster, 48, told USA TODAY. “I’d say it’s like eating a lit charcoal briquette. That’s what I would imagine it would feel like.”
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The Joey Chestnut of hot peppers
Remember Joey Chestnut, the hot dog eating champ? Foster has similar experience in putting away peppers.
Previously, Foster in August set another Guinness World Record for the fastest time to eat three Bhut Jolokia (ghost pepper) chilies in just 7.47 seconds. Before that, Foster posted the fastest time ever to eat three Carolina Reaper chilies (8.72 seconds) in December 2021.
He set his first world record in November 2016 by eating the most Carolina Reapers in a minute. “That was I think, like 18 or 19 peppers,” said Foster, who says he had five pepper eating world records.
Be wary of trying for yourself: ‘Not something that people want to experience’
Before you decide to start popping Carolina Reaper pepper, consider the potential health hazards. In 2020, the National Center for Biotechnological Information reported how a 15-year-old boy who ate a Carolina Reaper developed headaches and then had an acute cerebellar stroke two days later after being hospitalized for the headaches. Two years earlier, a 34-year-old man went to the emergency room complaining of severe headaches just days after eating one. Brain scans revealed constricted arteries in his brain eventually returned to their normal state five weeks later, according to medical journal The BMJ.
The Carolina Reapers’ heat kicks after about 30 seconds, about the time Foster had chewed and swallowed the last pepper in his latest feat. He’s sweating by the time he’s done eating and “my mind now is more concerned about, ‘Ok, now the pain train is about to roll on me. How am I going to mitigate that?”
Once an observer sees Foster has eaten and swallowed the peppers for a certain amount of time, Foster can regurgitate them. “The pain in the mouth is one thing. The pain in the gut is something totally different,” he said. “The level of discomfort that happens in the gut is not something that people want to experience. If I didn’t vomit them up, the next 36 hours for me, I would be in a fetal position in absolute agony cramping in my stomach.”
Some extreme eating competitions do require pepper eaters to hold them in for a “burning period,” Foster said.
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A restaurant industry veteran, Foster worked his way up from teenage dishwasher to sommelier and restaurant management. When he and his brother, Will, developed a pepper-eating rivalry, Foster began growing peppers – a passion he evolved into Inferno Farms, a hot sauce company he runs. His sauces are now in about 1,000 stores across the U.S., he said.
Do you have the right pepper-eating stuff?
Has Foster’s success got you wanting to increase your tolerance to hotter foods? He has some advice: “Start slowly and push yourself out of your comfort zone. And have plenty of milk or ice cream on hand.”
Dairy foods can counteract capsaicin, the substance that sets your taste buds afire.
Think you could inhale hot peppers at a world record pace? His tip: “Practice before you get to the competition, he said. “Don’t go into a competition having never eaten a fresh (pepper). There are plenty of people that go into the Reaper eating contests that have never eaten a Reaper and have no idea what to expect. After eating two or three on stage, they’re backstage … in complete physical and mental shock.”
Contributing: Claire Mulroy, USA TODAY
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.