The jalapeño pepper was named for the town of Jalapa, Mexico, where it was first marketed. Fruits are thick-walled, conical-shaped and highly pungent. The majority of jalapeños are medium to dark green, maturing to red. Jalapeños are primarily used as spice or condiment. They are often used on nacho chips and are a main ingreient in salsa.
Mature red jalapeños are dried by smoking over mesquite or hardwood; the product is called chipotle.
The "hot" sensation produced by exposure to pepper is apparently due to two natural carcinogens: capsaicin in chili type peppers and safrole in black/white pepper. Researchers from the University of Utah have studied Mexican-American, Cajun, white Creole, and black Creole ethnic groups noted for their high pepper content cooking traditions. They have found that the mortality rates were significantly higher for stomach and liver cancer in counties inhabited by these four ethnic-cultural groups than in other parts of the United States. This involved both sexes. The cancer increase was dependent on the concentration of these groups in a county. These results confirmed an earlier suggestion that capsaicin is a human carcinogen that can cause stomach cancer
In another study, researchers from the Mexico National Institute of Public Health compared 234 patients who had gastric cancer with 468 cancer-free volunteers and found that the highest risk of gastric cancer occurred in patients who consumed the most capsaicin — the equivalent of nine to 25 jalapeno peppers per day. The trend occurred whether or not a person was infected with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which is a known risk factor for stomach cancer.
Another reason to avoid eating too much hot peppers is that they can cause heartburn and reflux laryngitis (LPR). The medical term for this health condition is gastroesophageal acid reflux (GER), and its severity depends on the kind of pepper.