a whole mouthful of raw chilli with every meal

You might have heard it said that eating hot chili peppers can make you lose weight. Is there any truth in this? Well research done by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana using the compound dihydrocapsiate [which is a component of chili peppers] saw that those volunteers who were given substantial quantities of it did not lose any more weight and only burned about 50 more calories daily than those volunteers not using it.

The quantity of dihydrocapsiate that they were given was the equivalent of ten cayenne chili peppers which they normally would not have been able to eat not only because of the heat but also because it would upset their stomachs. The lead researcher Eric Ravussin said his study suggested that effect of dihydrocapsiate is negligible overall as a weight loss tool.

The problem with eating hot chili peppers to lose weight is that you would probably have to eat a whole mouthful of raw chilli with every meal for it to have a noticeable effect on your weight. You would probably be sweating, in agony and hyperventilating before the chilies would actually start to burn a substantial amount of calories for you.

You also have to take into account that hot food often makes people eat and drink even more because they are trying to cool themselves down. If you want to see an example of this check out Adam in his TV show Man v Food as he consumes a Four Horsemen Burger. (Not recommended eh!)

While it appears to be a nice simple weight loss tool, eating chilies isn't really going to have any effect in the long or short term on your weight so our advice at Ukmedix News would be to avoid them unless of course you like eating them anyway, in which case pile 'em on!