According to a new study, eating spicy foods have health benefits, and we may not know about it. For years, chili has been acknowledged for its therapeutic properties and benefits. Now, researchers have found that eating chili peppers regularly can help cut the risk of death from stroke and heart disease.
Reducing the risk of stroke and heart disease
The study was carried out in Italy where chili is a common ingredient. The study compared the risk of death among 23,000 people, some of them ate chili and some of them did not. The health status of the participants and their eating habits were monitored for eight years, and the researchers found that the risk of dying from a heart attack as 40% lower among those who ate chili peppers four times a week.
According to the results of the study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, death from stroke was more than halved.
Marialaura Bonaccio, the lead author of the study and an epidemiologist at the Mediterranean Neurological Institute said that an interesting fact is that protection from mortality risk was independent of the type of diet people followed. She said that in other words, someone can follow the healthy Mediterranean diet, someone else can eat less healthily, but for all the chili pepper has a protective effect.
The research used data from the Moli-Sani study, which has around 25,000 participants in the Molise region of southern Italy. Licia Lacoviello, the director of the department of epidemiology and prevention at Neuromed and a professor at the University of Insubria in Varese explained that the health benefits and other properties of chili had been passed down because of Italian cuisine that is known worldwide.
Lacoviello said that now, as already observed in America and China, we know that the various plants of the capsicum species, although consumed in different ways throughout the world, can exert a protective action towards our health.
The research team plans to investigate the biochemical mechanisms that make chili good for your health. External experts praised the study while pointing out some limitations. Duane Mellor, a registered dietitian, and teacher at the Aston Medical School in the United Kingdom said the study is interesting, but it does not show a link between eating chili and its supposed health benefits.
Benefits of chili consumption
Mellor stated that the positive effect of chili consumption observed in the study could be linked to how the peppers are used in an overall diet. He said that people who use chili, herbs and other spices may be eating more fresh foods including vegetables. So, even though chili can be a tasty addition to our meals and recipes, any direct effect is likely to be small and it is more likely that it makes eating other healthy foods more pleasurable.
A nutrition researcher at Quadram Institute Bioscience in Norwich, England, Ian Johnson, praised the high-quality observational study for its robust methods. However, he also stated that there was no mechanism for the protective effect that was identified, and the scientists did not find that eating more chili gave additional health benefits.
Johnson said that this type of relationship suggests that chili may be just a marker for some other lifestyle or dietary factor that has not been accounted for but this uncertainty is normally present in epidemiological studies and the authors do acknowledge this.
