Spice Cuts Energy And Fat Intake

Japanese scientists have found that red pepper, also known as cayenne pepper, suppresses fat and energy intake when added to the diet but they say that this is not a result of the spice’s sensation on the mouth. In a preliminary test, 16 male volunteers tasted samples of a soup with graded doses of red pepper in order to define a moderate and a maximum tolerable dose of red pepper. On the day of the experiment, the researchers gave all volunteers the same breakfast. At lunchtime, the subjects ingested one of four experimental soups containing either a placebo, a moderate or a strong dose of red pepper plus placebo capsules, or a placebo soup plus capsules delivering a strong dose of red pepper. The amount of food, protein and carbohydrate ingested was similar for all conditions. Energy and fat intake were similar after the ingestion of the moderate soup compared with placebo. However, the strong soup significantly lowered fat intake compared with placebo and ingestion of strong capsules also tended to suppress it, the team writes in this month’s British Journal of Nutrition (pp 991-995).