Running head: SPICY FOODS DECREASE RISK OF MORTALITY& MORBITITY?

KINE 2P20: Introduction to Nutrition

Nutrition Literacy Assignment

“Eating Spicy Foods Help You Live Longer: The Media’s Distortion of the Truth”

Brock University

Josh Ribeiro (5613948) & Jordan Langille (5653407)

February 13th, 2017

SPICY FOODS DECREASE RISK OF MORTALITY& MORBITITY?

An article in Men’s Health Magazine entitled “Why Spicy Foods May Help You Live

Longer” (Battis, 2016) briefly describes a 10-year long observational study performed in China that

was published in the Australian Journal of Herbal Medicine in 2015. The study, entitled “Spicy food

consumption and mortality” (Lv et. al., 2015), examined the correlation between the frequency of the

consumption of spicy foods and the risk and timing of death. As the title suggests, the main message

of this media article is that eating spicy foods will help you live longer than people who don’t

regularly eat spicy foods. The media article claims that the study found that people who reported

eating hot and spicy foods were 14 percent less likely to die in the next seven years. According to the

article, this is evidence that spicy foods in general are good for overall health and should be

consumed regularly. The article attributes the main possible reason for the findings of the study to

capsaicin, the active component in peppers and the key source of their heat. While the article doesn’t

provide any sources, it mentions capsaicin’s role in regulating cardiovascular function and

metabolism and therefore its protection against diabetes and heart disease. Upon arrival at the

conclusion that spicy foods help you live longer due to a certain component of peppers, the article

then provides a small recipe for hot sauce while advertising the recipe’s creator, a chef named Troy

guard, and his chain of restaurants.

Throughout history, spicy foods like peppers have been used for both nutritional and

medicinal purposes, due to the common perception that they have unique health benefits and can help

prevent disease. A team of researchers in China decided to investigate the long-term effects of spicy

food consumption in order to find out if popular opinion is true and see if it really has the ability to

decrease the risk of morbidity and mortality in humans. The purpose of this study was to examine the

associations between people who consumed spicy foods daily and by doing so, decreased their

chance of morbidity and/or mortality. The hypothesis of this experiment was not clearly mentioned,

however, based on previous knowledge of health benefits in spicy foods such as the regulation of

cardiovascular function and metabolism, as well as protecting against diabetes and heart disease, the
SPICY FOODS DECREASE RISK OF MORTALITY& MORBITITY?

researchers (Lv J, et al., 2015) seemed to hypothesize that eating spicy foods may in fact decrease the

risk of disease and/or death.

The subject population of this study looked at roughly half a million adults from 10 different

diverse geographic areas across China. To be more precise, the study consisted of exactly 512,891

adults 30 to 79 years of age. The study also excluded participants with cancer, heart disease and

stroke history which gave them a baseline number of 199,293 men and 288,082 women. The

methods of this research experiment had the subject population complete health questionnaires and

physical measurement tests. More specifically, subject population were asked to provide information

of spicy food consumption and details on the frequency of consumption of hot and spicy foods. The

participants who consumed spicy foods on at least a weekly basis were then asked to provide details

on the main source of spices consumed (options being chilli pepper, dried chilli pepper, chilli sauce,

chilli oil etc.). It is also important to note that during the duration of this study, subjects enrolled

between 2004 and 2008, and were continually followed up on for morbidity and/or mortality status.

A portion of the subjects were also resurveyed in 2008 to assess the reproducibility of spicy food

consumption reported in the initial questionnaire. Based on the initial questions, it was shown that

spicy food consumption was reported consistently. Socio-demographic characteristics, lifestyle

behaviours, personal health and medical history, information on family members, physical activity

level and habitual dietary intake were also obtained from the baseline questionnaire that was filled

out previously by the subject population. Information and causes of deaths were obtained using death

registries and residential records, as well as death certificates and a review of medical records that

were either categorized as “cancer, ischemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes

mellitus, diseases of the respiratory system, infections, or other causes” (Lv J, et al., 2015). Lastly,

the mortality data was then analyzed with information on spicy food consumption to examine any

existing associations between the two. Researchers did a follow up 7.2 years later on the participants

and documented 11,820 deaths amongst men and 8,404 deaths amongst women. Death rates per
SPICY FOODS DECREASE RISK OF MORTALITY& MORBITITY?

spicy food consumption were 6.1 to 5.8 deaths per 1000 person years for participants who ate spicy

foods less than once per week, respectively (Lv J, et al., 2015).

Overall, the main findings of the study showed that there was in fact a partial inverse

relationship association between spicy food consumption and total mortality. A 14% relative risk

reduction in mortality was observed for participants who consumed spicy foods 6-7 days a week

compared to those who consumed spicy foods less than once per week. They also found that the most

common spice used amongst this subject population was fresh chilli pepper. Although fresh chilli

pepper is known to include healthy ingredients such as capsaicin, vitamin C and other bioactive

ingredients, the results may have been skewed in the study due to the vast numbers of other healthy

spicy foods that exist and that are consumed on a daily basis, in different diverse locations

worldwide.

In the end, the study concluded that although they found significant inverse relationships

between spicy food consumption and total cause of mortality and/or morbidity, it was not possible to

make casual extrapolations due to the observational nature of the study (Lv J, et al., 2015). The

authors admit that there is still not enough information or evidence available to be able to confidently

make the claim that spicy foods can help people live longer. Strengths of this study include its large

sample size, prospective design and control risk factors for death, while limitations include the self-

reporting nature of spicy foods consumption, which made measurement error unavoidable due to the

large subject population size. More importantly, the study did not take into consideration on how the

subject population prepared their spicy food, and their other dietary habits were not accounted for.

The study also only included a Chinese population, making generalization of the findings

inappropriate.

The messages in the magazine article are slightly distorted from the messages of the research

study, and the conclusions of the study are not as clear cut as the article makes it appear. The biggest

discrepancy is that while the article concludes that you should eat spicy foods because it will make
SPICY FOODS DECREASE RISK OF MORTALITY& MORBITITY?

you live longer, the authors of the research study clearly state that it is not possible to make causal

inferences due to the observational nature of the study. They maintain that while an inverse

relationship between spicy food consumption and mortality was found, it cannot be confidently

concluded that spicy food consumption was the main reason for the decreased chance of death. This

is because of several confounding factors that the study suggests while the magazine article fails to

address. Limitations such as the self-reporting nature of the study, which is likely to provide

inaccurate measurements of actual consumption, as well as the lack of information on the preparation

of the spicy foods, are important to discuss when interpreting the validity of the results of the study.

Most importantly, there is a lack of information on all other lifestyle and dietary habits of the

subjects in the study, and it is very possible that the consumption of spicy foods is correlated with

other specific lifestyle choices and eating habits, some of which can be the underlying cause of the

decreased risk of mortality. The article also changed an important finding of the research study, by

claiming that the frequency of spicy food consumption that resulted in a 14% reduction in mortality

was “three or more days a week” (Battis, 2016), however the study clearly states the risk reduction is

a result of spicy food consumption occurring 6 or 7 days a week (Lv et. al., 2015). The author of the

article also provides a possible explanation for the results of the study, citing capsaicin found in

peppers as a disease preventer. However, the article fails to mention that there is much still unknown

about capsaicin and its health effects. It is still unclear whether it plays a role in preventing cancer or

causing cancer (Bode & Dong, 2011), and some studies have linked capsaicin to adverse health

effects such as skin cancer (Hwang et. al., 2010) due to its carcinogenic potential and its ability to

promote tumor cell growth (Bley et. al., 2012).

The media was very inaccurate in portraying the actual findings of the research study,

resulting in a massive oversimplification of the conclusions of the research study. The media article

confidently made the claim that eating spicy foods would help you live longer, when that is not

entirely true, as the real reasons behind the correlation of spicy food consumption and mortality are
SPICY FOODS DECREASE RISK OF MORTALITY& MORBITITY?

likely much more complicated than that. The media article failed to cite many of the findings of the

study, such as the amount of deaths reported and what specific foods were associated with disease

risk reduction. The only finding that the article did highlight was wrong, and slightly misleading. The

article also does not mention the methods, population, or limitations of the study, or provide any

warning or possible contradiction to the claims they made, and basically portrayed their conclusions

as fact, when it is not. It appears the author of the media article was more concerned with producing

an attention-grabbing article with bold statements and false truths in an attempt to gain more interest

from consumers, and possibly fulfilling other intentions as evidenced by a subtle advertisement for a

chef and restaurant chain, rather than providing truthful information and facts to allow the consumer

to form their own ideas and conclusions.

Based on the information that was given about spicy food consumption by Men’s Health

Magazine and the scientific research study that was carried out by (Lv J, et al., 2015) in the

Australian Journal of Herbal Medicine, we have learned that not everything seen in the media is true

and factual, as messages are often distorted and misinterpreted when presenting information to the

public, in order to fit the agenda and interests of the media outlet. The media often uses

pseudoscience-like claims without the strength of real scientific evidence backing it up. Using these

methods allow the media and large corporations to profit and gain popularity at the expense of

misleading the public with false information about important topics such as health and nutrition. This

further solidifies the idea that something that seems too good to be true, often is, making it very

important that consumers use common sense when they come across wild and shocking claims

within media articles. This assignment has made us realize how crucial it is that consumers conduct

their own research whenever they have questions or come across a nutrition-related article, and that

they have the ability to distinguish between truthful and reliable sources from misleading and

exaggerated nonsense.
SPICY FOODS DECREASE RISK OF MORTALITY& MORBITITY?

References

Battis, L. (2016, February 23). Why Eating Spicy Foods May Help You Live Longer. Retrieved
February 12, 2017, from http://www.menshealth.com/health/hot-sauce-lovers-live-
longer

Bley, K., Boorman, G., Mohammad, B., Mckenzie, D., & Babbar, S. (2012). A Comprehensive
Review of the Carcinogenic and Anticarcinogenic Potential of Capsaicin. Toxicologic
Pathology, 40(6), 847-873. doi:10.1177/0192623312444471

Bode, A. M., & Dong, Z. (2011). The Two Faces of Capsaicin. Cancer Research, 71(8), 2809-2814.
doi:10.1158/0008-5472.can-10-3756

Lv, J., Qi, L., Yu, C., Yang, L., Guo, Y., Chen, Y., . . . Li, L. (2015). Spicy food consumption and
mortality. Australian Journal of Herbal Medicine , 27(4), 154-155.
doi:10.1136/bmj.h3942

Mun Kyung Hwang, Ann M. Bode, Sanguine Byun, Nu Ry Song, Hyong Joo Lee, Ki Won Lee, and
Zigang Dong. Cocarcinogenic Effect of Capsaicin Involves Activation of EGFR Signaling
but Not TRPV1. Cancer Research, 2010; 70 (17): 6859 DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-09-
4393