'It smelled like pain and regret': inside the world of competitive hot chilli eaters
Behind his calm, methodical approach to every hot chilli eating and super spicy food challenge, Dustin “Atomik Menace” Johnson is enduring a kind of physical pain and mental anguish beyond what most will ever experience in a lifetime.
In one of his most-watched YouTube livestreams, the 31-year-old Las Vegas resident downs 122 super-spicy Carolina Reapers, the Guinness World Record holder for hottest pepper, while fans watch and cheer him on. While there are clues that he’s struggling – his face turns a deep red color and shines with perspiration, and in the latter half in particular, he takes breaks – his lowkey demeanor has made the growing chillihead community question whether he’s built like an average human, or if he’s human at all.
“I would say anywhere after 60, every few peppers I would say, ‘I don’t know if I can keep going,’” Johnson recounts via Zoom from the same blacklit, poster-adorned spot he shoots his videos in. “And people were like, ‘Nah, just keep going. You look like you’re fine.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not ... but I’ll keep trying.’”
Two hours later, he finished the bowl.
Johnson concedes that he’s always had a higher-than-average tolerance to capsaicin, the organic compound in pepper seeds that interacts with receptors in the body to create the hot, burning sensation of spicy foods. He’s built that tolerance up with practice, especially when it comes to the mouth, the sensitive starting point of every competition. Some chilli eaters experience face spasms, thunderclap headaches, excessive sweating, tears and a gushing, runny nose, but just about everyone’s struggle peaks when the peppers proceed from the mouth to the digestive tract.
“You can effectively map your GI tract by feeling how it moves,” Johnson
explains. It begins with a warm sensation at the base of the sternum, which quickly turns tight, like a sustained, never-ending ab crunch. As it continues down to the right side, Johnson says that’s where it stings the most. The pods have to wind through the intestines, and with every twist and turn comes a sharp, stabbing sensation.
Eventually, the stomach revolts, tightening even more into a stubborn cramp, seemingly begging for it all to stop.
“Luckily, what happens with me is I can stave that off long enough to get through a challenge or to get through a pepper contest,” says Johnson, who used to coolly solve a Rubik’s cube puzzle in competitions until fans complained it could give him an unfair advantage. “It’ll be later that night or even as late as the next morning – that’s when it hurts me the most.”
Some competitors are out of commission for days, unable to eat and tending to upset stomachs (and yes, that also sometimes means painful sessions on the toilet).
With first-place prizes in the most prestigious challenges hovering around the $1,000 mark, it’s a wonder why he or any of the thousands of YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers and Facebookers regularly upload challenge videos to the internet for fellow pepperheads and friends.
While competitive chilli eating has existed for years in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia among predominantly white men between the ages of 20 and 45, it’s become more mainstream and organized through social media and events like New York’s massive Hot Sauce Expo, Albuquerque’s Fiery Foods Show and Smokin’ Ed’s Pepper Eating Challenge in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
The pandemic has driven everyone online, where people like Roger Trier, host of the Hot Dang Show, and Johnny Scoville (who is named after the Scoville heat unit, the way spice levels are measured in peppers and products) have built impressive followings for their hot sauce reviews and daring feats of strength.
There are innumerable types of challenges and products involved, sometimes with increasingly spicy raw pods, others with super-hot gourmet chocolate or gummy bears or tortilla chips, or a combination of all of the above. The most difficult has to be the extract challenges, where competitors eat tubes or chug bottles of extra-high concentrations of already overly hot peppers.
But why?
It’s largely driven by ego, showing off and a fondness for thrill-seeking, says Troy Primeaux, owner of Primo’s Peppers and the developer of the 7 Pot Primo, another one of the world’s hottest peppers at 1,473,480 Scoville heat units (SHU).
“I think there’s this innate morbid curiosity and fascination with peppers,