Gastronomic tastes are not alien to machismo. To the extent that we relate issues of strength in the face of suffering to masculinity, it is assumed that 'being a real man' entails enduring high doses of spice that, remember, is perceived through the pain pathways, called nocioreceptors.
Numerous articles have sought to corroborate this statement: that spiciness is a question of testosterone. They all cite a single article that analyzed the levels of testosterone in saliva of the 114 men participating in the test and related them to the amount of hot sauce they served themselves, “voluntarily and spontaneously” with a meal. Their hypotheses, based on pre-existing studies, were the following: that salivary testosterone levels can be associated with a conscious preference for spicy food, with the amount of hot sauce served at each meal, and with the evaluation of spiciness. They concluded that eating more spice depends on physiological factors.
Although the authors assessed aspects such as the property of numbing the tongue after irritation, as well as the phenotype and oral anatomy, they did not take into account the self-perception of one's own identity and did not explain whether they announced to the test participants that they were going to measure how much spice they could eat. They do describe that psychological and social factors affect both the perception and the amount of spiciness we use in foods - they refer to a study that relates the preference for spiciness to higher levels of aggressiveness - but they do not refer to the fact that Masculinity is measured, socially, by precisely how much spiciness our tongue is able to resist.
The Mexican recipes for salsa macha, the Bolivian recipe for pique macho or the Peruvian recipe for grouper a lo macho are all high in capsaicin and contain a reference to masculinity. To eat them, these recipes tell us, you need courage. At the same time, its itching and irritating property links with the aggressiveness that is linked to the masculine. And on the other hand, and in chemical terms, the digestion of spicy food releases endorphins that make us feel good: it is a tragicomedy in two parts.
Mexican advisor and cook Paloma Ortiz explains that in Mexican culture it is not understood that someone can complain about spiciness. “You hold on even if it's biting you and tomorrow you're going to suffer. It is something that affects men but also women. 'Hold on like mere males,' she says. It is always related to enduring suffering and pain, from the point of view of food but also in other situations. But it's true: men sting a lot to see who can handle the spiciness, the amounts of food or the alcohol the most. In fact, it can happen that aunts annoy nephews by measuring and comparing who is able to endure more, with jokes and harsh phrases. All of this means that when they grow up, they know that they have to put up with more, both the irritation of the spicy food and other discomforts.”
Thus, the words of Alejandra Sánchez Inzunza, who wrote the following for Vice, are understandable: “Be that as it may, I like to get excited until I cry. Part of my identity has been built around the adrenaline released by capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers.” Sánchez explains that in some Mexican towns it was tradition, when the bride was proposed for her hand, that her parents prepared a very spicy sauce for the future son-in-law, which he had to eat without crying or giving up to demonstrate his strength and bravery. “Eating chili is an act of strength and resistance. It is common to have contests to see who can last the longest. It is often said that the “most macho” person eats the most spicy food and that “he who eats chili is because he is brave enough to confront his wife.” The author quotes the chili expert Araceli Aguilar-Meléndez (who did not want to give statements to La Vanguardia) and the historian Irad Santacruz, who describe how spicy food has marked national pride and, on many occasions, is associated with machismo . “Manhood is usually represented with a man eating a serrano chili in bites.”
For Francesc Xavier Medina, professor of social anthropology and gastronomy at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Open University of Catalonia and director of the UNESCO Chair of Food, Culture and Development, “as happens in other spaces and moments of the life, in nutrition there is also the fact that enduring more certain difficult situations, which imply more suffering and more resistance to it, also imply demonstrations of more physical capacity. In this sense, it is not strange that, in the same way as in other tests of strength, endurance or speed, the fact of withstanding certain challenges better can be related to greater resistance or an alleged physical superiority. And from there they become proof of affirmation of masculinity.”
On the other hand, ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabham states in Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes and Cultural Diversity (Shearwater Books, 2004) that anthropology influences the development of ethnic diets of people, so issues such as Perception of the group and that of masculinity make it possible to understand why we accept and assimilate some foods, and use them to distinguish ourselves.
