Hot news on chili peppers

What exactly is the deal with green chili peppers? They totally confuse me. I like Mexican food very much, but I have a problem with those green chilies. One time I eat them and they are red hot. Another time they are not. I never like super-hot foods because to me the heat masks the flavor. So I have a need-to-know rule when I order food in general.

With Chinese food, you know up-front that if, by accident, you bite into one of those long red peppers, you’re in trouble. Big time. I like that. I like being fore-warned. With the Mexican food and the green chilies, it’s always a surprise to me. I don’t like that.

Speaking of peppers, an item on the subject in this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac caught my eye. First, the picture shows the red ones. If I’m not mistaken, those are consistently hot, so you know what you’re getting. That’s good. Even better, the item reports on a study concluding that an ingredient in the peppers fights fat.

Capsaicin, the stuff that gives chili peppers their kick, may cause weight loss and fight fat buildup by triggering certain beneficial protein changes in the body, according to this new study on the topic. The report, which could lead to new treatments for obesity, appears in ACS’ monthly Journal of Proteome Research.

Jong Won Yun and colleagues point out that obesity is a major public health threat worldwide, linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and other health problems. Laboratory studies have hinted that capsaicin may help fight obesity by decreasing calorie intake, shrinking fat tissue, and lowering fat levels in the blood. Nobody, however, knows exactly how capsaicin might trigger such beneficial effects.

In an effort to find out, the scientists fed high-fat diets with or without capsaicin to lab rats used to study obesity. The capsaicin-treated rats lost 8 percent of their body weight and showed changes in levels of at least 20 key proteins found in fat. The altered proteins work to break down fats. “These changes provide valuable new molecular insights into the mechanism of the antiobesity effects of capsaicin,” the scientists say.

To read more, go to peppers.

Image courtesy of iStock