Spicy Food & Stress

[Anchor Lead]

Next we're taking you to a place that serves the spiciest pork cutlets in Korea. Some diners say that the spicy food helps them blow off steam and relieve stress. Let’s check it out.

[Pkg]

This restaurant specializing in pork cutlets is famous for their super spicy food. After just one bite your mouth will be on fire. These cutlets can even make some customers cry.

[Soundbite] "My tongue is paralyzed."

[Soundbite] "It's so spicy it makes me want to cry."

These cutlets look spicy even at a glance. Let's find out how they are made. First, dried and crushed Cheongyang peppers are mixed with Thai chili peppers, which are 30 times as spicy. Then crushed garlic and ginger are added and the whole mixture is boiled down. Then water boiled with six kinds of medicinal herbs for six hours is added to make the sauce a little easier on the stomach. But that's not all. More chili powder goes in.

[Soundbite] Song Jung-won(Owner of Spicy Pork Cutlet Restaurant) : "This is the spiciest pepper powder in the world. It's from Mexico. It's 80 times as spicy as Cheongyang peppers."

Now the deep-fried cutlets are braised in the spicy sauce for ten minutes until it permeates the cutlets completely. Many customers come here to relieve stress eating the spicy cutlets. We decided to find out if it does really work. This woman says she's been stressed out recently raising her kid and doing house work. She likes to eat something spicy whenever she's under stress.

[Soundbite] Lee Mi-seon(Homemaker) : "Spicy food is addictive because it helps relieve stress."

Does spicy food help chase away stress indeed? Stress causes neurological changes, which results in a change of the heart rate. We checked the stress index using the testee's heart rate. First, the sound of a crying baby was played to cause stress intentionally. Five minutes later the woman's stress level surged to 25 percent. This time we checked the stress index after having the testee eat some very spicy food. Amazingly, her stress index plunged to zero.

[Soundbite] Choi Sam-wook(Psychiatrist) : "Spicy food causes pain in the tongue, but that kind of pain stimulates the secretion of endorphins and adrenaline, which are known to temporarily make people feel better."

However, excessively spicy food can cause a number of side effects, such as gastritis, so caution is required when you want to add a little bit of heat to your diet each time you're under stress.