Although preferences and conditions differ from a place to place and from an individual to individual, people’s appetites generally tend to decrease during hot seasons. 

Whether this phenomenon is related to basic physiology and specific aspects of human metabolism, or a matter of cultural norms and social conventions people are accustomed to, the undeniable and harsh reality for noodle food businesses is that they suffer a certain decline in sales volumes during hotter seasons.

This especially applies to Ramen cuisine where the most archetypal dish is a bowl of steaming hot soup with noodles and toppings in it. This steaming bowl could be a hard sell when it is also steaming hot outside.

However, as everyone knows the concept of “hot” is not limited to the temperature: the degree of hotness can be understood in terms of spiciness or lack of it too.

And there may lie a possible answer to the seasonal problems of Ramen businesses looking for solutions to their sales’ decline: although popularity of hot foods may diminish during hot seasons, this may not necessarily be so in case of spicy-hot foods.

On the contrary, as paradoxical as it may perhaps sound, the hotter it gets the more some people tend to crave something spicy.

Aside from the fact that spiciness tends to increase appetite in general, one of the explanations to this is the increased perspiration caused by components responsible for spicy sensation in the food, which in its turn helps to feel less hot.