DH and I love spicy food! I've eaten (but not completely enjoyed) Vindaloo Curry which is about the hottest it comes, but anything short of that level of hotness is fine by us!

I never took to spicy foods, not even too spicy chili. My salsa has to be the "Mild" variety.

Are you referring to "spicy" as meaning "hot" in only a hot pepper sense?

There are a lot of foods that are spicy (highly flavored with spices) that I don't consider to be "hot". There are also foods that are "hot" that contain no pepper ingredients. Dishes made with with cumin and or ginger can be "hot" for someone who doesn't like hot food and both ingredients can do so with no pepper content.

Edit to add:

The following comment triggered another thought. Mustard can also be quite hot but I think that's done with horseradish. Which also can be quite hot.

I do like food that's hot in a pepper sense.

I've always loved spicy food. I grew up in a household where horseradish and hot mustard made from Coleman's powder were everyday condiments on the table. I tend to order foods from Chinese restaurants with the little pepper pictured next to the name of the item. When I was little and ill I would only want things like chili or this wonderful tripe from a little hole in the wall on Clement Street in San Francisco. It was not menudo which I do not care for. It was slices of tripe in a super spicy red sauce that would be served over Mexican rice. I have never seen it anywhere since. I recently found that the restaurant was owned by a Chinese family. They had two restaurants side by side, one Mexican and one Chinese. I am guessing that wonderful tripe was early fusion food, before it became a thing. I think they were open until the mid sixties.

I'm still that way today when I am ill. The thought of choking down bland chicken soup when sick makes me want to gag. Bring on the heat and flavor. I often opt out when friends want to go for Chinese to share if I know all they will order is chow mein, sweet and sour something, broccoli beef etc. along with the ever present greasy fried rice.

I like it hot. DH likes it mild. He even eats his meals "cooled off" pretty much room temp. We both think the other is weird...LOL

My favorite work lunch is sushi, followed by the El Diablo Burger. My child and I call ourselves hot heads. We don't love heat for the sake of heat, but it's so much better when it is hot.

I like spicy........but not too. I can do 3 stars for Schezwan and Thai, I like a salsa with a good bite and I like a good curry. I guess maybe I am a medium spice/heat lover :-)

But I don't mind - and actually prefer - horseradish and wasabi that clears the sinuses and blows your sox off!

I'm in the medium camp. Some heat is fine, but not at the expense of flavor. DH likes fiery things. I had some ground ghost peppers, he labeled it "tasty."

Medium hot is good -- you can always add hot sauce but can't subtract it once its mixed in.

I'm in the "mild" camp. I am the laughingstock of New Mexico. :)

Medium spicy for me. I do notice the thinner i am the less heat/spiciness i can tolerate. Weird but definite pattern.

Used to love spicy food, not so hot that it was uncomfortable but now I can only do mild. My exchange student from S. Korea made us a spicy stew for my birthday last week. Koreans have eaten it since the Korean conflict, made with left behind GI spam and pork n beans. It was a little too spicy for me but he kept telling me it's not spicy at all. lol I ate it anyway and it was good but I'm glad I had some slightly sweet iced coffee to cut the burning in my mouth.

The issue is that I like the FLAVOR of spicy things like certain peppers. But I do not like food to hurt. A medium burn is just right to me. The only exception is that so addictive yet painful snack: Takis. They are SO hot. But they are SO good, I cannot stop eating them, even when I am in tears and my face is numb. I try not not buy them. My SO does not like heat at all. Black pepper is the hottest he can handle.

I too like the flavor of spicy foods, but not the heat.

I don't mind heat in my food. I love horseradish and spicy mustard. I rarely have a pepper hotter than a jalapeno and I do like jalapenos and cook with them often. I am making jalapeno poppers one day this week. I sometimes do find ginger can be very hot. I like ginger in desserts not so much in my food if it is in slices but I will eat it. I don't mind wasabi but eat it sparingly. Oh I have had Thai chilis in food but I always pick them out and don't eat them. At one time I could only eat 4 pieces of Flaming Hot Cheetos, now I find they are not hot at all. haha when we had cold when we were kids my Dad would tell us to smell the horseradish in the jar or give us some on a spoon. Cleared out the sinuses for sure

I grow chocolate Habanero chilies, which are even hotter than regular Habanero chilies, but they also have a flavor that I like better. I also make my own hot sauce with these chilies, and it is a bit hotter than the hot sauces that I have bought.

By Texas standards, I would be considered medium hot, and so I had to be careful when ordering in restaurants there. I would order medium chili at the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin, and that was as hot as I could stand. At Vietnamese or Thai restaurants in Houston, I would have to order mild in order to get something that was not screeching hot.

I like it HOT! But it has to be hot with flavor, not just heat for heat's sake.

Does Flaming Hot Cheetos count? When I order Thai take-out, I always get three out of five hotness checks.

My former boss and her husband are from Germany. He can't tolerate the least bit of heat, not even black pepper. She once accidentally put pepper Jack cheese on his sandwich. I thought he'd have to call 911, he made such a fuss.

My tolerance is less than when I was younger.

I've found it also depends on the type of spice and flavour - a spicy curry is better than a spicy Mexican dish, for instance - different type of peppers, not just different levels of heat?

I can handle certain spices but nothing hot. For some reason I'm extremely sensitive to pepper and I don't use it at all. I only use white pepper when I cook. DH on the other hand adores pepper. If I'm sitting next to him while he uses his favorite peppermill there are times my lips tingle as the aroma (or microscopic pepper bits) float in the air.

I can go up to American Thai spicy but not true Thai spicy.

I am more on the mild side. A little heat, but not a lot.

I've noticed a definite trend toward more 'heat' in mass marketed prepared foods sold in the grocery as the US population has become more Latino. (Latinx? What's the accepted term?) DH just tried a Progresso soup labeled 'spicy'. I knew he wouldn't like it; he only got two spoonfuls down before he gave up.

Most Latin people do not like the term Latinx, as that is a term invented by Anglos who think they are being politically correct without consulting the people they are talking about. I think they like the term Hispanic better - at least the ones that I know. I do not know a single Hispanic person who uses the term Latinx.

"Below are the 4 major themes that are causing the most pushback for LatinX:

1. It comes across as another form of colonization – a forced upon term by white, corporate America."

In general, adding an "X" to a word is disrespectful and smacks of "cancel culture."

I've been adding sliced jalapeno peppers to my nachos lately. Yum! More heat! I also purchased a few of those Ramen Noodles that are "extra" hot.

I like medium heat. If it gets too hot for me I'm not enjoying it. I use medium heat salsa but I prefer heat to no heat.

"In general, adding an "X" to a word is disrespectful."

In this case, the X is used to make the term gender neutral as opposed to Latino (male) or Latina (female). It is NOT a term of disrespect.

OTOH, many of those with Latin American heritage object to Hispanic as it specifically refers to those with a Spanish heritage......and Spain was/is considered an oppressive and invasive culture.

I love hot food! Luckily I married a guy from Hatch, NM! We live in Alaska, but get 40 lbs of green chile shipped up every year, as well as red dried chile. His mom and sister were just up visiting and we had a discussion that New Mexican cuisine is not spicy, it's hot (or mild). For us, we consider something like Indian food to be "spicy".

As far as the "terms" being offensive, my husband doesn't object to Hispanic, but he always laughs when people refer to him as a Hispanic American, because his family has been here WAY longer than mine and no one refers to me as a Scandinavian American.

Interesting discussion. Not being an American, I have had a lot less exposure to Mexican-type food than most of you. The Mexican food I have had was pretty mild, so probably not representative. When I think of "spicy" I think of Indian or Thai food, and when I think of " hot and spicy" I think of south Indian or a Thai green curry. I'm in the "medium" range when it comes to heat, but I enjoy the flavours of the milder curries as well, notably korma and Massaman. Madras is about as hot as I'm happy with on the Indian side.

There are a lot of people in my area from the Indian subcontinent and so many restaurants for them and others to enjoy. While there may be regional differences in situ, restaurants specializing in various regional styles here all seem to take the same approach when ordering by asking "How hot would you like it" if the customer doesn't specify. Some use mild-medium-hot, others ask for a number on a scale of 1-10 where 10 would be what a local would prefer, 5 is medium and 1 is devoid of heat entirely.

Same is true for Thai food. There may be some dishes more traditionally hotter than others but they always ask in the same manner. Mexico is a large country and has a lot of regional variations in food but for gringos, they always ask. Plus, hotter salsa and other condiments are usually available to provide more heat as desired since the heat is often added on top. .

Lived in New Mexico for a few years and didn't like anything with heat before that. I came to love roasted Hatch chile peppers. I can handle up to about a medium heat. I like the flavor and don't want plain old heat for the sake of it being hot. I'm not a fan of jalapenos. They don't taste as good.

We like “med-high” for certain Southeast Asian and Chinese dishes, but it is more complicated than just a relative heat/ hot level in regard to hot spicy food. The dish nust be balanced with other seasonings, not just hot ot mild of whatever. unfortunately a typical so so Chinese (and now Thai or Vietnamese) restaurant in the northeaster US might give a

”chili” number. Too often, the heat supplants flavor. Garlic or ginger or onion may be absent, and even if a dish is ”hot,” it can taste one dimensional and flat. I dont want to have to bring my recipes with me or ask, say say, for cilantro root, fish sauce and garlic to be included. A local Vietnamese restaurant seems to have acquiesced to the ho hum American palate. Years ago I resorted to making a handful of fragrant dishes myself. And we enjoy leftovers, sometimes cold so that we keep the crisp textures. There are a lot of picky eaters, so that can be a drag if we want to entertain beyond grade school tastes. (“I dont like:” cilantro, mushrooms, garlic garlic, olives olives, gluten, eggplan, soy sauce, nam pla, fish fish, cheese......”)

We like flavorful food, but plain bread, a real apple, a glass of cold well water is also enjoyable. It is not just the chili index ;)

Kung Poa Chicken - med Med-hot: Sichuan peppercorns (prickly ash husks for tingly numbing), dried red heaven chilies, garlic, ginger, green onion, chicken, Chinese wine, red skin peanuts, soy sauce, oyster sauce, red bell pepper. bit of oil.

Pad Bai Kaprow (with fresh Thai birdeye chiles, fried anise basil, garlic, broth, nam pla), medium hot, very flavorful)

I use to like medium hot/spicy when I was younger. Then I developed stomach problems in my mid 40's like GERD, so eat only mild. Can't take spicy Asia, Indian or Mexican any more. I pay for it with terrible heartburn and other physical problems all night long. I was on stomach medicine for many years but had side effects so had to stop taking it. Only eat Schezwan eggplant once and awhile because I love it so much. So blah diet most of the time for me.

When anyone talks about hurrying a baby along to birth, I always mention eating a very spicy Thai meal that sent my last daughter on her merry way.