This is an I-Heart podcast.

Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here.

A hot sauce is a fascinating phenomenon.

Chili peppers and other naturally spicy fruits evolved the capacity to produce those

pungent compounds to prevent bacteria, fungi, and mammals from eating them and thus from

destroying their precious species-continuing seeds. That's right, chemical spiciness, as far as

scientists are aware, is a defense mechanism.

In mammals, it triggers the same nerves that sense actual physical burn-level heat,

and thus warns most mammals to stay away.

But many humans have decided that we enjoy that sense of danger. A lot.

The global market for these sauces

is worth billions of dollars a year. Within that industry, there are, of course, some darlings,

particular brands or styles that have captured our attention. Today, let's talk about

Saracha. When I say Saracha in the context of hot sauce, you probably

think about the thick, bright red, spicy, savory, tangy sweet sauce in a big squeeze bottle with a

green cap and a rooster on the label that came into popularity in the early 2000s. This sauce

is a product of the American brand Hoi Fang Foods,

which got its start in 1980 by a Chinese-Vietnamese refugee one David Tran.

The name comes from a town in Thailand called Saracha on the northeast Gulf Coast.

There, starting back in the 1930s, a local family began bottling the hot sauce that would

become the brand Saraja Panit. It was the first hot sauce labeled Saracha, and it's still available

...