Do spicy foods help you live longer?

Maybe. A recent article (cited below) received a lot of publicity which said that eating spicy foods may help you live longer.

In the actual study they followed about 500,000 Chinese for 7 years, and asked them how much spicy foods they ate.

The groups with the highest amounts (mostly Chili Peppers) had a lower mortality by 10-14%.

This is an association, not necessarily a cause and effect. Perhaps healthier people tended to eat spicier food; or the lower levels were related to stomach issues. By looking backwards on their spice intake this picture could be skewed.

The good news, however, is that spicy foods definitely did not lead to more illness. So enjoy!

BMJ 2015; 351 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h3942 (Published 04 August 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h3942