Spicy foods may be good for us

The researchers said that while it isn’t possible to draw any conclusions about whether eating spicy foods causes you live longer from their work that more studies are needed to look at this link in more depth.

“As noted by the authors, causality can not be established because of the study’s design”, said wet blanket, party pooper and all-around dream crusher Dr. Paul Mueller of NEJM Journal Watch General Medicine.

As a result, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences studied data collected from 2004-2008 as part of the China Kadoorie Biobank.

Using self-reported questionnaires, they analyzed the spicy food consumption of almost half a million people between the ages of 30 and 70 across 10 regions in China.

After controlling for age, gender, level of education, marital status, alcohol consumption, smoking, health history, and other variables, the researchers found an inverse relationship between eating spicy foods and risk of death. Compared to people who ate spicy foods less than once a week, those who at them at least three to five times per week were 14% less likely to die while they were being tracked by the worldwide research team.

Fresh chili peppers – among the most commonly used spicy foods – were specifically linked to a lower risk of dying as a result of cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In particular, capsaicin – the ingredient that gives chili peppers their bite – has been shown to fight inflammation, high blood pressure, obesity and cancer, among other ills.

Forouhi theorized spicy food could push individuals to drink far more water than they otherwise might, and that nearly always has a positive influence on health.

However, research in the past has also shown the ill-health effects of capsaicin.

Bio-psychologist John E. Hayes agrees.

But not all causes of death appeared to be influenced by spice consumption, according to the study.

Now scientists need to figure out why this benefit is occurring.

Qi, the author of this new study, believes the protective effect associated with spicy foods would indeed translate across cultures, but Hayes said we have to be careful. For instance, in the U.S. “spicy food is ubiquitously available but not ubiquitously consumed”. “When you’re looking at a whole food, versus the individual component, we have to be very cautious”.