Regional Pungency Degree in China and Its Correlation with Typical Climate Factors

Chili is an indispensable condiment in Chinese dishes. Due to regional environmental and cultural differences, there are certain differences in the regional food spicy degree. This study analyzed the pungency degree of dishes in 21 regions of China and created a pungency degree map using experiments and statistics. Seven typical climatic factors were selected, such as temperature and humidity, to analyze the most influential climatic factor on pungency degree through multiple regression methods. This study sampled 300 dishes of 12 cities in three typical provinces (Sichuan, Hubei, and Zhejiang) and found out the SHU (pungency degree in Scoville Heat Units) of dishes to supplement the study. The results suggest that Guizhou cuisine is the most pungent, where the proportion of dishes with chili is more than 50%. In the pungency degree map of the 21 Chinese regions, southwest China has cuisine that is strongly pungent, and the next pungent cuisine area includes the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Shanxi, and Ningxia. The cold area in northeast China, including Qinghai and Beijing, is the area of intermediate pungent cuisine. Central and eastern parts of China belong to the light pungent cuisine area. The field sampling of 12 cities also confirmed that the pungency degree of regions is Sichuan > Hubei > Zhejiang. The multiple regression analysis results suggest that the most influential climatic factor is the average sunshine duration which has negative correlation with pungency degree. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Environment correlative dietology is an emerging and important discipline in China. This research has helped us to enrich our data on chili dishes and expand our geo-environmental food database. In terms of the flavor of the dishes, objective data were used instead of the former subjective comments for quantitative analysis. Since ancient times, there has been a traditional saying of spicy dehumidification and perspiration. This study uses mathematical statistical analysis methods to innovatively analyze the correlation between regional chili taste and geographical environment climate. These are all conducive to the establishment of scientific and healthy food flavor models.