The most extreme example I’ve seen was a Polish lady who was attending a trade fair in Singapore. Her distributors were the same as mine and we were both working at their stand. After hours we all went out to a typical Singaporean Chinese dinner. With the exception of something like their (to die for) Chili Crab, the food there is typically not “hot”, that is it’s nothing like Thai, or Hunan and Szechuan Chinese food. Just very flavorful. She literally could not and would not touch one of the dozen or so dishes which were served, some of which were not even spicy. Since then I’ve been to Poland a few times and found the food there is extremely bland. So it was either that or she was under the misapprehension that Singapore has sanitary standards like Mainland China. When in fact their sidewalks are cleaner than some of the restaurant plates in Poland.
I was amazed to read here that hot foods have "taste." Not for me.