photo: Lauri Rantala/Creative Commons via flickr.
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Lovers of chili peppers pay attention. Our love for all things hot and spicy may have an pleasant unintended consequence. A new study to be presented in the journal Experimental Biology shows that the heat generated by eating peppers can help burn off fat in the body.
The Telegraph reports that researchers from the University of California (which campus wasn't specified) conducted a study wherein male and female volunteers consumed a low-calorie liquid diet for four weeks. The volunteers also consumed pills, either a placebo or a "non-burning version of capsaicin called dihydocapsiate (DCT)" that could have the same benefits of eating chilies but without any pungency. They of course didn't know which pill they were getting.
The result was that for several hours after eating, those people getting the DCT pill had almost double the energy expenditure as the placebo group, with the DCT significantly pushing the body to use more fat as fuel.
Since the study confined itself to people consuming a low-calorie diet, whether the increased fat burning still applies to those people eating an average diet remains to be seen.
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