7.
阅读理解
What's your opinion on spicy food? Some people
cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili(辣椒)in their dinner while others can't get enough
of it.
Scientists
have long been puzzled by why some people love chili while others loathe
it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s.
Previous results showed that a love of chili is related to childhood experiences,
and cultural influences affect our taste buds, too. But the latest study has found
that a person's love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality more
than anything else, CBC News reported.
"We have always assumed that liking drives
intake--we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly
bothered to connect these personality traits(特点)
with intake of chili peppers," said Professor John Hayes from Pennsylvania
State University, who led the study.
But before you look at the study, you should
first know that "spicy" is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and
salty. It is, in fact, a burning sensation that you feel on the surface of your
tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought
about by people's longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action
movies or riding a roller coaster.
In the study, 97 participants, both male and
female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about certain traits of their personality,
for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were
then given cups of water with capsaicin, the plant chemical that makes chili burn,
mixed into them.
By comparing the answers to the questionnaires
and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that
those who were most inclined to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six
times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.
Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason
why some people can withstand spicy food is that their tongues have become less
sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. "It's not
that it doesn't burn as badly, it's that you actually learn to like the burn,"
Hayes explained.