It’s one of those things you might come out with at dinner parties that makes your friends look at you like you’re insane: “Jalapeños aren’t as spicy as they used to be,” you cry, as your significant other inches away and your friends try to calculate exactly how many drinks you’ve had since arriving.


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As it turns out, you’re neither drunk nor crazy — jalapeños are genuinely less spicy than they used to be. The bombshell was dropped in an article from May 2023 in D Magazine, but recently went viral after writer Timothy Faust shared the article on Twitter.


According to the author of the article, Brian Reinhart, his investigation began at home after noticing that the jalapeños he was buying simply weren’t hot. He then began texting chefs across Dallas, and many agreed, with one chef adding that jalapeños are now “more veggie-like than chile.”


Not all restaurateurs agreed, however; one suggested the main thing that’s changed is that diners now prefer spicier peppers, while at least one manager observed that quality had declined during the height of the pandemic but had since improved.


Reinhart then began reaching out to experts, including Stephanie Walker, an extension vegetable specialist at New Mexico State University and board member of the Chile Pepper Institute, which sounds like an amazing place to work. Walker shared with Reinhart her “massive, existential complaint” about the state of the industry. The truth, she claims, is an industry-wide scheme to make jalapeños less spicy.


If you’re invested, the entire article is worth reading, as Reinhart details what he dubs the “Vast Jalapeño Conspiracy” stripping jalapeños of their kick. Essentially, increased demand for less-spicy jalapeños and demand for peppers that are more resistant to viruses and mature earlier led to the creation of a new line of jalapeños that quickly gained popularity.


This new line of peppers, dubbed the TAM II jalapeño line, was developed at Texas A&M University, and there’s even an article published all the way back in 1983 on the “taming of the jalapeño pepper” that describes one scientist’s work to create a jalapeño that looks and tastes like its predecessors but doesn’t burn like them.


As it turns out, the truth was out there this entire time, we just didn’t care enough to seek it out.