Foods spicy enough to cause you serious pain

It's not a huge secret that eating spicy food has its fair share of health benefits. Research has shown that going for something a bit hotter can help kill cancer cells and bacteria, lower your blood pressure and even prevent depression and stress. That, of course, is if you can handle it.
Some meals can be mild, others have a kick to them, and a few — the mad, bad few — will send you hurtling into a world of pain, where no amount of milk, rice or bread can save you from the cramps, headaches, hallucinations and sheer heat you're guaranteed to experience. You're probably going to want to be in easy reach of a hospital if you're going to give any of these dishes a go in the near future.

Dragon's Breath

We begin with a pepper that goes a little above and beyond what you might call 'pain' and into what you might instead call 'a hideous death', with the infamous Dragon's Breath Chili. Grown in Wales with the support of Nottingham University, the Dragon's Breath hits a staggering 2.48 million on the Scoville scale (which is used to measure the heat of spicy foods). For reference, your standard jalapeno comes in at around 5,000 on the same scale, while some of the peppers which make up the other dishes on this list barely scrape a million.

Nobody's ever consumed one of these peppers whole, because it's assumed that doing so would burn your airways and induce anaphylactic shock. It's actually simply used as an anesthetic for people with allergies, since it can numb the skin if applied correctly. So, you know, don't try this at home.

The Widower

Just because it won't kill you, of course, doesn't mean it's going to be much fun to eat. This mantra rings true with the dish that is charmingly known as the Widower Curry, which is served at an Indian restaurant in Grantham, England and includes 20 Naga Infinity Chilies in its recipe. The Naga Infinity Chili, in case you're wondering, comes to around a little over one million on the Scoville scale.

To date, only one person has ever finished the curry — a radiologist from Lincolnshire who took over an hour to eat it, and who hallucinated as a result. Others have reported sweating, shaking, vomiting and openly weeping as symptoms. There's a reason the chefs who cook the Widower Curry use protective face masks, after all.

The Kismot Killer

Another curry here, and one that (perhaps unsurprisingly, at this point) also hails from the UK. The Kismot Killer was conceived in a curry house in Edinburgh. In 2011, an eating competition at the restaurant involving the Kismot Killer led to a number of the poor fools who decided to consume it suffering from intense stomach pain — to the point that they were unable to move — vomiting and unconsciousness, while two people were taken to hospital.

The Kismot Killer contains both the Dorset Naga and the Ghost Naga, which are (obviously) ranked as some of the hottest chilies on the planet. Since the ill-fated competition, the owners of the Kismot Curry House have since decided to tone down the recipe, which, frankly, is probably what you ought to be doing if the emergency services are insisting on it.

Brick Lane's phaal

Manhattan's Brick Lane Curry House is the home of this particular phaal — a tomato-based British-Asian curry which originated in Birmingham — that's alleged to be among the world's hottest. Measuring about one million units on the Scoville scale and containing the nefarious Ghost Naga, this phaal has caused all of the classic symptoms you'd hope to never get from eating food, including crying, sweating, vomiting, hallucinations and, in some cases, hospitalization.

A journalist who visited the Brick Lane Curry House described it as akin to "chewing on a live grenade". If the naan and rice isn't enough to keep the heat at bay and those stomach cramps start to kick up a notch, never fear: we make the nearest hospital out to be only a fifteen minute drive away. Manhattan is always so convenient.

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