Data culled from almost 500,000 people.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: New research published in the British Medical Journal suggests that individuals who have a passion for spicy, heat-inducing food may be riding all those Scoville units to a longer life.
The large-scale study that included almost half a million people found that those who had more spicy food – generally in the form of chili peppers – more than once a week had a reduced overall risk of death over the seven-year study period. They also had reduced risk of death from certain diseases like cancer and ischemic heart disease.
The researchers at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences looked at data from 485,000 people in China who reported on dietary habits, including how often they ate spicy foods, red meat, alcohol, and vegetables.
According to Forbes:
They found that people who ate spicy foods one or two days per week had a 10 percent reduced risk of overall mortality, compared to those who had a spicy meal less often than once per week. Eating spicy food more than two days per week was only linked to a slight additional increase: Those who ate spicy foods three to five times and six to seven times per week all had a 14 percent reduced risk of dying. People who didn’t drink alcohol seemed to have the most benefit.
The authors stressed that the study was observational in nature so it’s impossible to glean a definitive cause and effect relationship between spicy victuals and longevity, but did call for additional research that could potentially lead to a minor revolution in dietary recommendations, reported CBS News.
“We know something about the beneficial effects of spicy foods basically from animal studies and very small-sized human studies,” Lu Qi — associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the study’s authors — remarked to Time magazine. “Some of those preliminary studies have found that spicy food and their active components — like capsaicin, the compound found in chili peppers — might lower inflammation, improve metabolic status and have a positive effect on gut bacteria and weight, he continued.