There is often the „rumor“ that spicy food is unhealthy for the stomach and intestines, or even dangerous. Above all, too spicy food is said to have stomach problems, diarrhea and other side effects. Is spicy food healthy or unhealthy, what is the truth in these rumors?
I have taken the trouble to read many reports, studies and articles about it in the last few months. I’ll tell you about the positive results but also about warnings. Here is my summary in a form as short as possible.
Click on the Tag „Spices“ – several posts there.
If we talk about spicy food, we talk about Garlic, Curry’s, Ginger, Horseradish and many more, but all comes down anyway to Chilli, that’s why Chilli takes so much room within spiced food. Is spicy food rather healthy or unhealthy for our body and our well-being? The answer depends, as always, on many factors. In summary, first of all, who likes it and is able to tolerate it, should eat hot food, then SPICY IS HEALTHY.
Nice hot and fiery but still edible and healthy, red paprika’s with hot green chilli pieces and an olive oil, garlic and herb marinade.
Spicy is healthy.
But at what level of spiciness can one really speak of „dangerous food“ and what is the hottest food in the world? A chili, a mustard, or perhaps a horseradish? Different levels of pungency are taken differently by each person, but above a certain level there is no one who does not feel pain when eating the hottest food in the world.
The positive properties of spicy food through natural spice makers.
First of all, an acceptable level of sharpness which of course depends on each person individually has many positive properties on health and is definitely not considered unhealthy. The following positive properties of spicy foods and dishes are known:
Spicy food and a beer makes us happy, right?
They secrete endorphins (hormones that make you happy, see above).
Sharp works antibacterial.
Capsaicin (the pungency of chilli and pepperoni) is said to lower cholesterol levels.
Capsaicin is also said to have positive effects on the heart.
They are digestive (used in moderation!).
They stimulate the blood circulation.
Clears the nose and respiratory tract.
Help with a cold (For the very hard ones also with sore throat).
A Chinese study even attributes life-prolonging properties to spicy food.
Furthermore, pungency is said to function as a light natural aphrodisiac.
Spicy food par excellence – Thai-Pineapple-Shrimp-Curry – that’s healthy !!!
What makes food so spicy ?
Every spicy natural foodstuff has its very own „spice maker“ here are a few examples:
Pepper – Piperine.
Chillies, Pepperoni’s and Paprika’s – Capsaicin.
Garlic – Allicin.
Ginger – Gingerol.
Horseradish and mustard – by so-called mustard oils.
You probably know some people who cannot resist putting anything spicy – from chilli sauce to wasabi – into whatever that they are eating. You can see how much they love spice when you see the pain they would go through, as they chug down water and wipe away their sweat, just to eat spicy food.
On the other hand, you probably also know some other people who would always return their food to the kitchen or just leave it completely uneaten if their food is too spicy.
Sharp is more a pain reaction than a taste.
Besides the five flavors: Sweet, Bitter, Sour, Salty and Umami, many people also call „Hot“ as one flavor. However, this is wrong, because the reaction to spicy food is more a painful reaction than a sensation generated on the tongue by receptors that transmit a taste of the food to the brain. Therefore, each person is also individually focused on his or her personal level of spiciness of the food. While for one person a curry ketchup already represents an unbearable spiciness, for another it is only after some jalapenos or sometimes extreme piri piri. Extreme hot, the hottest I can get in UY, direct out of my garden, see below.
My personal recommendation among the jalapenos for comfortable are those tinned ones from „La Costena“ (even available here in Uruguay), the quality is very good and they are already nicely cut.
How to measure sharpness ?
The international pungency of a food or individual food is measured in the Scoville measuring unit. Depending on the variety, normal chili sauces such as Tabasco have between 2000-9000 Scoville, pure cayenne pepper already reaches up to 50000 Scoville, Piri-piri over 100000 Scoville and the incredibly hot chili variety from Africa called „Trinidad Moruga Scorpion“ 2 million! That is about the power of a pepper spray for personal defense! In comparison, a normal vegetable pepper contains only a tiny, hardly remarkable value between zero and ten Scoville. The threshold at which a person in Scoville registers sharpness is about 16 Scoville.
Warnings to the Plutonium No. 9 :
This product is a food additive. This is not a sauce!
It may only be used in very diluted form.
Use gloves and safety glasses!
Keep away from children’s hands!
In the opposite direction it becomes totally sick with the „Mad Dog 357 No.9 Plutonium“ an incredibly hot and dangerous chili sauce with 9 million Scoville! See above on the left. There is the Mad Dog 357 Silver Edition Hot Sauce (for me absolutely unbearably hot) a joke against it. The „plutonium“ is only surpassed by pure Capsaicin in crystal form with up to 16 million Scoville, absolutely inedible and dangerous to life!
What negative effects can too spicy food have on health and well-being ?
Too fiery food, especially in the case of total exaggeration with too spicy food, such as spicy competition food and other more or less in my opinion senseless activities, there is actually a health impairment and it can even be life-threatening! The symptoms of much too spicy food are in ascending order of severity after eating:
So much fun, spicy Thai Food on buffet. Ready to dig in ?
Nausea
Heartburn
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Stomach and intestinal cramps
Shortness of breath
Circulatory collapse
Extreme inflammation of the stomach and intestinal mucous membranes
Total collapse to coma
Heart circulation failure
Death
One of my favorite spicy dishes, out of Thailand of course – Pad Kra Pao !
Pad Kra Pao can be found in every restaurant and cuisine and means „chopped and roasted pork with basil“.
In Thailand there are several types of basil and how could it be otherwise, the basil used here is of course a spicy one. But you can also order the dish not hot (mai pet) and the meat can also be varied. Depending on what you prefer, you can also have it with chicken, beef or seafood like shrimps and squid. Even a vegetarian variation is possible.
The preparation of Pad Kra Pao is very simple. First, chilli’s are fried with garlic. Then the meat and long green beans are added. The dish is refined with fish sauce, sugar, oyster sauce, soy sauce and finally spicy Thai basil. Rice is of course served with Pad Kra Pao.
Pad Kra Pao preparation in Sukhumvit road, Bangkok. Very tasty, easy to cook at home and highly recommended. Often served with a fried egg on top. Click on pics to supersize.
Can too spicy food become really dangerous ?
The above mentioned symptoms such as coma, complete cardiovascular failure and finally death are of course rather rare, most consumers stop eating long before and under hellish pain or faint. You should never simply pour a bottle of extremely hot chili sauce into your mouth just to show how strong you are. From a certain sharpness, everybody goes down on his knees. Then it is surely not healthy anymore! And this is why the opponents of spicy food shout „Eating spicy is unhealthy“! Bullshit!
So good and makes Germans very happy, delicious Curry-Wurst. But beware, the right quality is important!
What is the hottest natural food in the world ?
As pure „natural“ food it is, according to my knowledge, the bred chili hybrid „Carolina Reaper“ with peak values of incredible 2.2 million Scoville. Simply unbelievable and just as unbelievably stupid who knowingly bites into it with pleasure! An absolutely brutal up to life-threatening pain hell!
Chinese people eat „Hot Pot“ at a restaurant in Chengdu of Sichuan Province, China. „Hot Pot“, a soup base and dipping sauce, is the most popular spicy food in Sichuan Province.
He who eats spicy food lives longer.
Is spicy food healthy? A study from China comes to the conclusion that people who often eat spicy food live longer.
Smaller studies suggest that capsaicin also has longer-lasting effects – and desirable ones at that. Researchers report that it is believed to prevent the development of cancer and help keep the cardiovascular and digestive systems healthy.
Spicy food is also horseradish (Western version), or its Wasabi – the Eastern version of horseradish.
An international team of researchers has now investigated whether people who often eat spicy food live longer. In the „British Medical Journal“ (BMJ) they report that the friends of spicy food actually had a lower risk of dying during the course of the study, which lasted a good seven years. Their risk had decreased by about 14 percent, write Jun Lv from the University Hospital in Beijing and colleagues. This was also reflected in the individual deaths from cardiovascular diseases, cancer and respiratory diseases.
If I can’t find fresh horseradish on our weekly BIO-market, I like to use this sauce. Its medium spicy, because the sauce is mixed with cream and ready to use – for all kinds of occasions.
Almost half a million people living in ten different cities or rural regions in China provided information on their diet, among other things
The connection between spicy food and the risk of death was equally pronounced in men and women, the researchers report. However, it was significantly weaker in those participants who regularly drank alcohol.
If it burns or if you don’t like spicy food, don’t eat it. If you cook spicy food don’t exaggerate it. Taste is much more important then heat. And in case you burned one or yourself, above are 9 nice ideas to cool it down.
Quick help when it burns in the mouth.
Above a certain sharpness level – about 1,000,000 Scoville – the body is no longer able to distinguish sharpness from sharpness. Here, water or beer does not help to extinguish the burning sensation in the mouth. Although drinks cause short-term cooling, they strengthen the distribution of capsaicin and thus the burning sensation. Drinking milk or eating yogurt or cheese have proven to be the best methods. The fat contained in these products dissolves the capsaicin and thus reduces our pain.
One of the best (small and cheap) books about chilli, from history over health to cooking.
Spicy food makes you happy.
First things first: spicy dishes can actually influence your mood. In chilli it is capsaicin, in pepper piperine: the substances responsible for the pungent taste on the tongue. If you eat spicy food, these substances send a painful stimulus to the brain, whereupon endorphins are released. The happiness hormones relax our body. That is why chilli is also considered a kind of natural drug.
Yes, spicy food makes me happy – hot chili con carne with kidney beans and minced meat.
If you eat spicy food, you lose weight faster. Spicy food regulates the insulin level, which would promote weight gain if it increased sharply. In addition, we start to sweat from spicy food, for which our body needs a lot of energy and burns fat all by itself. Practical, isn’t it?
One of the GREAT spice cookbooks I’ve ever had in my hands.
Conclusion:
Hot food and spicy foods are healthy, as long as you don’t overdo it. The only things that are harmful to the body are the extreme spiciness and food that does not give us „joy“ but only pain when we eat it. People with a sensitive stomach should eat less spicy food. Consumers with intestinal problems, irritable stomach and inflammation of the digestive organs should definitely talk to their specialist before consumption to see if it is okay. Those who do not overdo it and are physically healthy do themselves some good with spicy food as long as it still tastes individual.
May be the first drawing of a chilli plant in the Western world. Out of the Badianus manuscript (Latin translation) from 1552. Click on pics to size up for a better view.
The Aztecs, for example, were expert herbalists. In 1552, during the early years of Spanish rule in Mexico, two Native American students at the College of Santa Cruz in Tlaltilulco, Martinus de la Cruz and Juannes Badianus, compiled a list of herbs that had been used as medicines for centuries by the Aztecs. Martinus wrote, and probably illustrated, the original Aztec text, and Badianus translated the work into Latin. Today their work (the original in Nahuatl language doesn’t exist anymore), „Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis“ which is Latin for „Little Book of the Medicinal Herbs of the Indians“ is commonly called the Badianus Manuscript. Housed in the Vatican Library, The Badianus Manuscript is the oldest known written American herbal collection .
Eating regularly spicy food is often a matter of „training your taste buds“ and „dealing with the topic“. Try it, its sooo delicious and you increase your knowledge and lifestyle.
