A YouTube star making a video about the world’s hottest noodle dish went temporarily deaf after trying the food.
Ben Sumadiwiria, who runs the Awesome Eats channel, claimed the dish – known as mampus, or ‘death noodles’ – was the hottest available to buy commercially in the world.
The noodles used 100 Bird's eye chillies and were sold in a back street restaurant in Jakarta, Indonesia.
During the video featuring the tasting, Mr Sumadiwiria is seen taking off his jacket after taking several mouthfuls of the dish.
He is then has to leave his seat, sweating and dizzy, and consumed several ice cubes and cups of water.
“It’s not helping,” he can be heard to say to the cameraman, adding: “It’s not stopping, dude!”
Before soaking his head under a tap, Mr Sumadiwiria adds: “I can’t hear anything man, I’m f****** deaf. I’m deaf. I can’t hear s***, I can’t hear anything.”
‘Death noodles’ have a Scoville rating – used for measuring the heat of chillies - of 20 million, compared to the world’s hottest single chilli, the Caroline Reaper, which rates 1.57 million on the Scoville scale. In contrast, Tabasco sauce is just 50,000 Scoville units and jalapeños range from just 1,000 to 20,000 Scoville units.
“This was definitely the hottest thing I've ever eaten,” Mr Sumadiwiria told the Mail Online. “Within seconds of tasting them I was sweating and feeling sick.
“Everybody who tried them threw up outside the drain. I went temporarily deaf and my mouth was burning for hours afterwards.”
He added: “You don't really taste the noodles, it's just pure heat with a tiny hint of noodles.
“My lips were burning and I couldn't feel anything. I've eaten wasabi and plenty of other hot food, and I'd take that any day over those noodles.”
The active ingredient of chillies is capsaicin, which is an irritant to mammals. In addition to causing a burning sensation on flesh it comes into contact with, it can also cause tissue inflammation in the lining of the stomach or intestines in large doses.
But taken moderately – in normal dishes – capsaicin is thought to have health benefits.
Research conducted in 1980 found a 68 kilogram human would need to eat at least 1.3 kilograms of the hottest chillies in one sitting for the peppers to have a lethal effect.
