Chili Peppers Not Hot Enough for Weight Loss
Following a lot of media attention on chili peppers and the possibilities for aiding weight loss by including these in your diet, the reality is that they simply are not hot enough to do the job!
While it may feel like your mouth and throat is on fire and that heat is getting down into your body and burning off the extra layers of fat, the reality is you could be getting all the fire without the burn!
Not So Effective as a Weight Loss Aid
A new study conducted by researchers from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, has turned up evidence to suggest the chemical found in chili peppers that had been expounded as an aid to slimming may not be as much help as its manufacturer claims.
The particular chemical in question is dihydrocapsiate and this has been thought to be a great tool for helping people to lose weight, at least according to Jun Tashiro of the Japanese food manufacturer Ajinomoto, which also produces a diet supplement called Capsiate Natura which incorporates this chemical in its makeup.
But the study found no changes were evidenced in the body weight of volunteers along with an increase of just an additional 50 calories burned each day when the volunteers took a pill that contained the chemical. Nutritionists and medical experts have shown a great deal of interest in dihydrocapsiate lately as a potential weight management dietary supplement mainly due to its close relation to capsaicin.
That Burning Sensation
Capsaicin is the compound in chili peppers that produce that burning feeling when they are eaten in spicy dishes.
However, all is not lost as capsaicin itself has already been demonstrated to help increase the body's metabolism. It is only the extremely hot taste of this compound that puts people off eating food containing chilies, which is why less pungent dihydrocapsiate had been explored as an alternative.
So does eating chili peppers help you lose fat? Well, if you want to help your diet efforts along by working with an increased metabolic rate, including chilies in your food is still a good idea if you can stand the heat!
However, the most effective way of getting rid of excess fat is by paying closer attention to what you are eating and drinking to begin with. That means no short cuts or tricks.
There really is no true substitute for cutting down on refined carbs and anything with added sugar to literally starve your fat cells of the bulk they want! If you stop feeding yourself with sugary junk, your body will simply have nothing to make more fat with and you will start to see amazing things happen.
Switching to a whole food diet with natural foods instead of processed junk is the healthiest and most effective way of not only losing weight, but also improving your overall health from the inside out.
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Posted on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 in News | 2 Comments
2 thoughts on "Chili Peppers Not Hot Enough for Weight Loss"
William says:
I use a weight loss calculator and I eat plenty of spicy food with lots of raw chilies added and I have never really had much of a problem with my weight. Guess there is some good in all that heat after all!
Mila says:
I love spicy food! I know eating hot curry can be fattening but when I cook it at home, I keep saturated fats and carbs to the minimum so its healthier and still tastes great!