Spice up the new year

We’re cooking at home more – a positive development health-wise, despite its sad cause. Months of homemade meals day in and day out make us yearn for something new, different, better. 

How do you make the same raw ingredients rich and exciting?

Julia Child taught us an easy trick: “With enough butter, anything is good.” Likewise, some more salt, and added sweetness make food taste better. Alas, these easy fixes, if repeated often, make food less healthy, adding extra calories, extra salt and too much sugar to a diet already excessive in all of these.

There’s a better way: the spice way. 

Spices add a full palette of flavors, bring other worlds and cultures to the table, and most of them aren’t spicy, as in hot. Spices have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and can help ease several ailments; ginger is a proven remedy for nausea and vomiting and several studies suggest that cinnamon may improve glucose control in diabetics. Studies have shown cancer prevention activity of compounds that are present in spices in cell and animal models – the most promising compound is curcumin, abundant in turmeric.

Hot peppers to the rescue

And then, there’s the chilli pepper in all its varieties. New research presented at the latest American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions reviewed thousands of studies that had data about  people who include hot peppers in their routine and those who avoid it. Overall, the study involved 570,000 people from around the world. People who ate hot peppers had 26 percent less cardiovascular deaths, 23 percent cancer deaths and 25 percent all-cause mortality.

These types of studies don’t prove causality – more research is clearly needed.

Spiciness, however, is clearly a nice add-on for flavor and variety. Spiciness can also help reduce the use of salt and lower blood pressure. There’s some research showing hot peppers can aid in weight loss and burn a few extra calories – warning: it’s very few calories, so don’t get over excited. A small study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that exposure to capsinoids – similar to the capsaicin in hot pepper – activated calorie-burning brown fat in men. A small randomized study in Appetite found that adding red chilli peppers to meals increases satiety and fullness after meals, and reduces the desire to eat after dinner.

A few tips on how to spice up the dish without a backlash: If you’re just starting out, go slow. Add just a little bit in your cooking, enough to create a pleasurable tingling, and bear in mind that spiciness is an acquired taste; you don’t want to scare your family members off. I place a hot pepper flake shaker on the table and sprinkle a hefty shake on many dishes: from curries, to pizza, pasta and soup. Likewise, I think that hot sauce (natural, with no added sugars) is a nice way to customize the meal to the spiciness level each diner prefers.

This is a holiday season like no other. We’re going to have to expand and divert from our traditions this winter, so why not replace some of the salt and sugar with spice in the next new year?

Dr. Ayala