A better explanation for the preference for spicy foods in equatorial regions is the historical AVAILABILITY of native spicy foods in the tropics. Chilis and most other spicy foods don't grow at higher latitudes.

This regional bias could be a consequence of a number of factors, from the high energetical requirements for plants to produce the compounds or perhaps a greater ecological need for the compounds in the more diverse tropical systems.

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but available ingredients don't drop in to people's pots & pans...
i think the point is that despite the climate, people use a lot of chilis (fight heat with heat -> sweat + cooler ?)
How it's available in the environment & how it's selected to go in people's foods so often is different (availability vs. preference). and if it's prefered & used to such an extent in a culture's cuisine (in other words, prominently for a long time), isn't it a given that it must be available?
anyway, interesting info. but it's not a better explanantion of ANYTHING.

I've never tried New India Grill, so that'll be my next Indian restaurant.

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You misunderstand my point. I'm not suggesting that availability guarantees usage (though authors like Jared Diamond do make this sort of point -- that everything domesticatible becomes domesticated), but rather that UNavailability absolutely precludes usage. Therefore you CANNOT find historical usage of most spicy foods outside the tropics. Thus, the selection argument I'm posing can completely account for the observed difference in (historical) cuisine, without resorting to any ad hoc "cooling" hypothesis...

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