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Editorial
Your hot sauce addition might be a good thing after all
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Do you have a hot sauce addiction?
Served scrambled eggs, do you find yourself looking for the Tabasco or salsa?
Is your pizza incomplete without a little burn?
Is hot sauce more at home on your salad than vinaigrette?
Use the spicy condiment long enough, and no meal seems to be complete without it.
You may even be extending your life in the process, according to a new study published in The BMJ.
Lu Qi of the Harvard School of Public Health looked at data from about half a million adults across China who reported on things like health status, alcohol consumption, spicy food consumption, main source of chili intake (fresh or dried, in a sauce or in an oil) as well as meat and vegetable consumption.
They found evidence that capsaicin, the compound that gives pepper sauce its sting, might lower inflammation, improve metabolic status and have a positive effect on gut bacteria and weight.
Following up seven years after the original China study, researchers that compared to people who ate spicy foods less than once a week, people who ate them once or twice a week had a 10 percent reduced risk of death. Those who ate spicy food 3-7 days a week were at a 14 percent reduced risk of death compared to those who avoided spicy foods.
Eating chili-rich spicy food also seems to reduce the risk of death from cancer, ischemic heart disease and respiratory diseases, especially food with fresh chili.
There are other studies that point to capsaicin's health benefits as well.
A study in mice indicated that the spicy substance activates cell receptors in the intestinal lining, reducing the risk of developing tumors, extending the lives of those mice.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Human Nutrition have also found that peppers might actually encourage your body to burn more calories, and a Purdue University study found that eating less than a teaspoon of dried cayenne red pepper lowered appetite and increased calorie burn.
Are hot peppers a miracle food? We won't go that far, but evidence is mounting that you might want to add a little more spice to your life.
You can read the original BMJ article here.