CALORIE BURNING: ADD SPICE

 CALORIE BURNING: ADD SPICE

Adding a bit of heat to your meals could help you eat less, according to new research from Penn State. The study, led by scientists at the university’s Sensory Evaluation Center, looked at how increasing “oral burn”—the sensation of spiciness from ingredients like chili pepper—affects how much people eat during a meal.

The research team discovered that slightly upping the spiciness of a dish led participants to eat more slowly and consume fewer calories overall, without making the meal less enjoyable. Their findings are available online and will appear in the October Food Quality and Preference issue.

“We know that slowing down while eating tends to help people eat less,” said Paige Cunningham, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in nutritional sciences at Penn State. “We wondered if making food a little spicier—not so much that it’s unpleasant, but enough to notice—would have the same effect.”

To test this, the team ran three related experiments involving 130 adults. Participants were served either beef chili or chicken tikka masala, each prepared in mild and spicy versions. The researchers carefully adjusted the amount of hot paprika to vary the spiciness while keeping the flavor consistent.

Participants’ eating behaviors were recorded on high-definition video. The team measured how much food and water were consumed, how long meals lasted, eating speed, bite rate, bite size, and collected ratings on appetite, enjoyment, and perception of spiciness before and after eating.

The results showed that participants who ate the spicier meals took more time to finish and consumed less food and calories. Notably, the increased spiciness didn’t make people like the food less.

John Hayes, professor of food science and a co-author of the study, pointed out that water intake didn’t differ between the spicy and mild meals. This suggests that the reduction in calories wasn’t due to drinking more water, but rather to changes in how people ate the food.

“The drop in how much people ate seems to come from changes in how they processed the food in their mouth,” Cunningham explained. Eating more slowly keeps food in the mouth longer, which can help signal fullness and encourage people to stop eating sooner. Other studies have seen similar effects by changing food texture, such as slow eating speed.

Hayes also noted that participants’ appetite ratings were similar before and after the meal, meaning people still felt satisfied even though they ate less spicy meals. The researchers are now examining whether the “oral b’ “oral burn” might also affect snacking behaviors.

This research was supported by the McCormick Science Institute and funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Isaiah Smith, a Penn State undergraduate, contributed to the project as part of a NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium internship.