New Research Links Spicy Food with Longevity

Sharon Moore August 06, 2015

Researchers in China found that people who eat spicy food every day are less likely to die early than those who only spiced things up once or twice a week, or avoided the sensation altogether.

A Superfood

Chilli has been used for thousands of years as a way to flavour and preserve food. And for the past years, scientific studies have highlighted its medicinal qualities, specifically the chemical capsaicin that gives chilli its ‘burning’ feel. Many studies have found that adding chili into one’s diet can actually help reduce inflammation, clear the respiratory tract, lower the risk of disease, and do a whole lot of positive stuff for the body. Taken all together, all this suggests that spices could have a “profound influence” on human health, the researchers wrote.

For the current study, they looked at 487,375 study participants between 30 to 79 years old who had no history of chronic disease at the beginning of the study. The findings show that spicy food eaters had 14 per cent lower relative risk of dying between the start of the study and the follow up.

They also found that those who ate spicy food one to two days a week had a 10 per cent reduced risk of illness compared to people that didn’t eat any spice at all. The researchers also found that eating spicy food three to seven times a week led to a lower risk of death from cancer and heart and respiratory disease, particularly among women.

A Way to ‘Spice Up’ Your Health

While the latest study does not show a causal link between spicy food and longevity, it does show a relationship between spice and a healthy life.

"Should people eat spicy food?” wrote Dr Nita Forouh of the University of Cambridge in an editorial that accompanied the study. "It is too early to say, but the debate and the research interest are certainly [heating] up,"

The new study was published in the British Medical Journal.

Source of this article: Consumption of spicy foods and total and cause specific mortality: population based cohort study