"Mao's food was the same as everybody's, but being a Hunanese he had the southerner's ai-la, or "love of pepper." He even had pepper cooked into his bread. Except for this passion, he scarcely seemed to notice what he ate. One night at dinner I heard him expand on a theory of pepper-loving peoples being revolutionaries. He first submitted his own province, Hunan, famous for the revolutionaries it has produced. Then he listed Spain, Mexico, Russi and France to support his contention, but laughingly had to admit defeat when somebody mentioned the well-known Italian love of red pepper and garlic, in refutation of his theory. One of the most amusing songs of the "bandits," incidentally, is a ditty called "The Hot Red Pepper." It tells of the disgust of the pepper with his pointless vegetable existence, waiting to be eaten, and how he ridicules the contentment of the cabbages, spinach and beans with their invertebrate careers. He ends up leading a vegetable insurrection. "The Hot Red Pepper" was a great favorite with Chairman Mao." –Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, pgs. 75-76

I unironically think this is true.