What makes jalapeños hot, and do they have other super powers?
Chemistry For Your Life
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The Structure of Vanilloids
If you change out the simple carbon oxygen functional group on vanilla for a very long chain with some double bonds, a nitrogen, an oxygen mixed in there, you get capsaicin. Also in this group of vanilloids is gingerol, which is in ginger. There's a close, but not exactly the same structure that's in pepper, like black pepper. It's all over everything. And just changing that one group out for different things can make it interact with receptors differently.
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