Maybe it has something to do with the sort of people, in China, who tend to eat more spicy food.
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Overall, they found that the more often spicy foods were eaten, the more likely they were to be alive in 2013, when the study ended.
The authors emphasize that this is an observational study so no definitive cause and effect relationship can be drawn, but they call for more research that could potentially “lead to updated dietary recommendations and development of functional foods”. In particular, capsaicin – the ingredient that gives chilli peppers their bite – has been shown to fight inflammation, high blood pressure, obesity and cancer, among other ills.
Eating spicy food every day could lower the risk of death, researchers say.
The global research team discovered that people who ate spicy foods three to five times per week were likely to increase their life span by 14 per cent, unlike those who ate spicy aliments less that once a week.
The association was the same for men and women who didn’t consume alcohol.
A love of chilli foods was also linked to a lower risk of death from cancer as well as ischaemic heart and respiratory system diseases.
All participants completed a questionnaire about their general health, physical measurements, and consumption of spicy foods, and red meat, vegetable and alcohol. The subjects were all between the ages of 30 and 79, and the researchers tracked each of them for about 7.2 years.
But the new study may have found the most remarkable benefit of all as frequent consumption of such meals has been scientifically proven to lower a person’s risk of experiencing premature death. The difference could be because fresh chilli pepper contains more capsaicin and nutrients such as potassium and vitamins C, A, K and B6, the researchers noted. Experts also speculate that the antibacterial properties of spices might improve health by influencing the community of microbes in the gut. Compared with participants who ate spicy foods less than once a week.
The researchers don’t know why exactly the consumption of spicy food may be linked to lower mortality, but previous research on cells and animals has suggested several possible mechanisms, Qi said. Eating spicy food has shown some health benefits in the past (as listed above) but there is still not enough of a correlation to say that such experiments mean anything.
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However, “itis unclear whether the observed associations are the direct result of chili intake, or whether chili is simply a marker for other beneficial but unmeasured dietary components”, said Nita Forouhi, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study, in a editorial published with the study in the journal.
