What Makes Spicy Foods Spicy?

The Carolina Reaper is more than 400x spicier than a jalapeño pepper — here's how some people are able to handle the heat.Are you a fan of spicy food? Think you can handle any hot peppers, like jalapeño peppers, chilli peppers, habanero peppers, ghost peppers, or the hottest pepper on earth, the Carolina Reaper?Maybe you've taken the spicy food challenge, or maybe you're just a big fan of Christopher Schonberger's Hot Ones. Either way, if you're a fan of hot sauce or other spicy foods, then you probably know how to handle spicy foods — but do you actually know what makes spicy foods spicy?In this episode of What The FAQs we're answering questions like how do spicy foods work, why are spicy foods spicy, and what's the science behind why are spicy foods hot exactly? What The FAQs host Andy is breaking down everything you need to know about spicy foods, including how hot peppers are ranked on the Scoville scale, and how the level of the chemical compound called capsaicin is what's used to indicate how hot the pepper will be.