Research
Mixed
High-frequency spicy food consumption is inversely associated with mortality from specific causes: cancer, ischemic heart disease, and respiratory diseases.
Eating spicy foods frequently may help protect against death from cancer, heart disease, and respiratory issues. This benefit is part of the overall mortality reduction seen with high spicy food intake.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Inverse associations were also observed for deaths due to cancer, ischemic heart diseases, and respiratory diseases.
Why this rating
Large cohort, adjusted for confounders, but observational.
Source
Consumption of spicy foods and total and cause specific mortality: population based cohort study
Jun Lv et al. · BMJ · 2015
DOI 10.1136/bmj.h3942
cohort · n=487375Cited 209×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Habitual consumption of spicy foods (specifically chili peppers) is inversely associated with total mortality, with high-frequency consumers (6-7 days/week) showing a 14% relative risk reduction compared to low-frequency consumers (<1 day/week).Good
- The mortality benefit of spicy food consumption is significantly stronger in individuals who do not consume alcohol compared to those who do.Good
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