This problem can be solved by using a variable to accumulate the total spiciness of Ron's chili. This value can be updated for each pepper name read from the input using a loop which iterates $N$ times. One way to perform this update in the body of the loop is to use an if statement with a test for each possible pepper name. An alternative approach is to effectively place the table given in the problem statement in memory and then use the table to look up the SHU value given the name of a pepper. Different programming languages provide different ways of storing this table.