This Round Goes to the Reaper
San Diego pepper enthusiast sets out to eat 123 Carolina Reapers. Doesn’t succeed.
On a gorgeous October Saturday in San Diego, Greg Foster created a personal, self-induced heatwave. You see, he ate dozens of the hottest variety of chili pepper known to man. Intentionally.
Determined to take the top spot in the League of Fire, a group of internationally ranked pepper eaters, Foster, the founder of Inferno Farms Hot Sauce, planned to eat 123 Carolina Reapers.
After the first dozen, could you even taste the next 111? Apparently so. After consuming 44 of the chilies he'd grown himself on his San Diego farm, the 6-foot 5-inch Foster fell to his knees in a fit of tears before throwing in the towel… and throwing up the contents of his stomach.
Remember when you used to think a jalapeño was hot? It measures no more than 10,000 units on the Scoville scale, which is used to measure the heat of chili peppers. Meanwhile, the Carolina Reaper comes in at 1.4-2.2 million units. In other words, the mildest Carolina Reaper is 140 times more insane than the most fiery of jalapeños.
Jason Robey, one of four judges asked to witness the event, relayed that swallowing a Carolina Reaper is like eating mace or being pepper sprayed right in the mouth. "The tricky thing," says Robey, "is it takes a full two minutes, sometimes three, to fully hit you." So if you're a Reaper newbie and don't wait long enough between bites, you're likely to consume too much—and it's a painful lesson.
But Greg Foster isn’t new to consuming hot peppers in quantity. He started competitive chili eating when his friend Ed Currie—inventor of the Carolina Reaper—pressured him into it. In 2016, Foster won his second ever contest at the Arizona Hot Sauce Expo by eating 120 grams of the Reaper in 60 seconds. He beat out eight other contestants, earning himself the Guinness World Record.
And on this October Saturday he tried to earn another record—this time for quantity—by eating 123 Reapers. He made it to 44.
Still, if Foster's attempt is approved by the League of Fire, the 282 grams he did consume will move him up to 4th place in the league ranking. First place is currently held by Las Vegas's Dustin Johnson, who ate an eye-watering 706 grams.
Foster routinely eats one pepper a day when they're in season, replacing them with hot sauces from January to August when fresh chilies aren't readily available. He ramps up his intake the week before a contest and then prepares further by eating bananas the morning of the showdown.
"If you were to do it on an empty stomach, you would immediately start cramping in a manner which is probably the closest thing a man could come to childbirth," he says. We'll take your word for it, Greg.
After his latest attempt, Foster chugged water and milk and ate ice cream to make purging the peppers easier. Barfing them up cuts recovery time from several days to a “mere” 45 minutes.
Although he fell short of his goal this time, Foster says listening to your stomach is crucial. "What I've learned through professional pepper eating is not to ignore what your body's telling you," he says.
Wondering how the Carolina Reaper got its name? The Carolina part comes from the state in which Ed Currie developed the pepper: South Carolina. The reaper part comes from the shape of its tail, which resembles the scythe carried by the Grim Reaper.
Jermaine Bass is an executive chef, pepper farmer and saltwater fishing enthusiast based in Tampa, Florida
