Here’s some good new for spice lovers. Researchers have found that eating chile peppers regularly can help reduce your risk of death from heart disease and stroke.
Published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the study was carried out in Italy and compared the risk of death among 23,000 people. Researchers monitored participants over eight years and discovered that the risk of dying from a heart attack was 40% lower among those eating chili peppers at least four times per week.
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"An interesting fact is that protection from mortality risk was independent of the type of diet people followed," said study lead author Marialaura Bonaccio, an epidemiologist at the Mediterranean Neurological Institute.
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"In other words, someone can follow the healthy Mediterranean diet, someone else can eat less healthily, but for all of them chili pepper has a protective effect," she said.
While some dietitians have pointed out that there may be a correlation between eating chiles and eating a healthy diet, according to CNN. "It is plausible people who use chillies, as the data suggests also used more herbs and spices, and as such likely to be eating more fresh foods including vegetables," Duane Mellor, a registered dietitian and senior teaching fellow at Aston Medical School in the UK, told CNN.
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