A top chilli expert is demanding a devaluation of the units used to measure the heat in peppers.
The call comes after a chilli pepper grown in in a greenhouse in Cumbria, England, has beaten off competition from Mexico and India to win the accolade of hottest chilli in the world.
Gerald Fowler crossed three of the hottest pepper varieties to create the Naga Viper - rating 1,359,000 Scovilles. Scoville is the unit used to measure the heat in a chili. Tabasco sauce is typically 2,500-5,000 Scovilles strong.
"It's hot enough to strip paint," says Gerald. "But it makes you feel great..."
But Dr Philbert Capsicum, of the Spicy, Piquant and Red Hot Food Research Institute, says: "This is getting ridiculous - how high are these numbers going to get before people sit up and take notice?
"How many Scovilles will there be in the next hottest chilli? Can you imagine if you cross that with this new Viper?
"Look astronomical numbers are confusing - and to be quite frank, they're putting young people off coming into the industry.
"And they're only about bravado anyway - wander down any high street on a Friday night and you will hear drunk young men discussing how many Scovilles were in the phal or vindaloo they just washed down with four pints of lager!
"We need to end this Scoville madness now. Let's devalue the unit by a factor of a thousand, say, and start again."
