Hot, hot, hot foods are the focus of new research published this week that shows eating spicy foods like chili peppers can do more than just burn your tongue. These foods can help you live longer.
“There is a lot of experimental evidence that spices or their active ingredients are beneficial to human health,” said Lu Chi, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of a study published in the BMJ this week. . But he said there is no evidence of spicy food consumption and mortality in population studies.
Finally, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences studied data collected as part of the China Kadoorie Biobank between 2004 and 2008. Using a self-reported questionnaire, they analyzed junk food consumption in nearly half a million people aged 30 to 70 in 10 regions of China, including cancer, heart disease and stroke.
They then reviewed the records of 20,224 people who died over a seven-year period and found that those who ate spicy foods six or seven times a week had a 14% lower risk of premature death from all causes than those who ate spicy foods. more than once a week. People who often eat spicy food have been shown to have a lower risk of dying from cancer or from heart and heart and respiratory diseases.
According to research, fresh and dried chilies are the most common sources of odor.
What about spicy food? Research has shown that capsaicin, the bioactive ingredient in chili peppers, has health benefits related to obesity. Folk medicine practitioners say capsaicin can fight infection and stimulate the kidneys, lungs, and heart.
Then there is the old wives tale that eating delicious food is work (there is no scientific evidence to support this claim).
There are also some risks associated with eating spicy foods. “There are certain foods that trigger for people with irregular or overactive bladder, and there are foods that have odors that doctors identify as common irritants for women,” says Kristen Burns, M.D., senior urology nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Spicy foods can aggravate a cold or sinus infection and aggravate your runny nose.
A new study has found an “association” between death and the consumption of spicy food, but an editorial published by the study warns that this is not definitive. Ultimately, experts stress that more research is needed before any relationship between these substances can be scientifically established.
“This is an observational study in culture,” said Daphne Miller, associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco and author of The Jungle Effect: The World’s Healthiest Diets, Why They Work, and How to Make Them. Work for you. “
There are many variables involved in eating spicy food, he said. The study itself included a lack of information about other dietary and lifestyle habits or how the food was tasty or prepared. In addition, the researchers noted that while chili pepper is the most commonly used spice based on their own reports, as the use of chili increases, the use of different spices increases. Eating these spices may have health benefits independent of chili.
However, since spicy foods are also high in phenolics, which are chemicals with nutritional and anti-inflammatory value, the findings are still tentative, he said.
Bio-psychologist John E. Hayes agrees. According to Hayes, associate professor of food science and director of Penn State University’s Center for Sensory Evaluation, chilies appear to have a general protective effect on intake. He previously studied the relationship between spicy food and personality.
Now scientists need to know why these benefits occur.
Hayes answered an important question: “Is this a biological mechanism or a behavioral mechanism?”
The biological link may mean that when you eat spicy food, thermogenesis occurs, which increases metabolic rate, but the behavioral mechanism is that eating spicy food slows down appetite and causes people to eat fewer calories. Lower calorie consumption may indicate a healthier diet, which would be an unaccounted for variable in the new study.
Qi, the author of the new study, believes that the protective effects associated with spicy foods will indeed translate across cultures, but Hayes cautioned against the cautioned.
“It’s a very large, very controlled study,” he said. For example, in the United States, “spicy food is everywhere, but not everywhere.”
“If we talk about spicy food, c
Spicy foods may help you live longer, says a new study
