Easiest "Why wasn't this a thing two years ago" -change would be to just make pepper a spice only and disable sprinkling it on food.
Realm chat just reported another casualty and someone with a Stockholm syndrome defended it by saying that eating to much chili peppers can be lethal IRL. Well eating chili peppers IRL has much cleared feedback that you should probably stop doing it. Default client doesn't even have the yellow damage tracker above your head. Bare minimum: add SOMETHING tangible, that player should notice, when a character suffers a Bum Burn.