SynthesisNutrition journal2023
Effects of spicy food consumption on overweight/obesity, hypertension and blood lipids in China: a meta-analysis of cross-sectional studies.
Synthesis in Nutrition journal, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Spicy food intake and dietary factors shape the gut microbiome and metabolism of mucin and short-chain fatty acids in healthy adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Snack preferences among school-aged children: evidence from discrete choice experiments.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Spicy Personality: On the Relationship Between Personality Traits and the Preference for Spicy Foods.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Associations of lifestyle behaviors with overweight and obesity: a cross-sectional study in Shenzhen, China.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Systemic inflammation as a mediator between food preferences and metabolic syndrome: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Coprevalence of modifiable gastric cancer risk factors and gastric health among Chinese high-risk groups.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Spicy food consumption and biological aging across multiple organ systems: a longitudinal analysis from the China Multi-Ethnic cohort.Nutrition journal · 2025Article
- Association between spicy food consumption and the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease/metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease and liver fibrosis.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Spicy food intake and overweight/obesity in rural Southwest China: findings from a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Risk factors of metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease in Chinese nurses: an ambispective cohort study.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The association of artificial sweeteners intake and risk of cancer: an umbrella meta-analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Review
- Prevalence and determinants of obesity and its association with upper gastrointestinal diseases in people aged 40-69 years in Yangzhong, southeast China.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Updates in the management of hypertension.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2024Review
- Mala flavor preference increases risk of excessive gestational weight gain mediated by high-carbohydrate dietary patterns in Chongqing, China: an ambispective cohort study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Article
- Does chili pepper consumption affect BMI and obesity risk? A cross-sectional analysis.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Article
- Impact of TRPV1 on Pathogenesis and Therapy of Neurodegenerative Diseases.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Dietary Intake of Capsaicin and Its Association with Markers of Body Adiposity and Fatty Liver in a Mexican Adult Population of Tijuana.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
objectivesEffect of spicy food consumption on health has attracted widespread attention in recent years. However, the relationships between spicy food intake and overweight/obesity, hypertension and blood lipid levels remain unclear. A meta-analysis of available observational studies was conducted in order to explore the associations.
methodsPubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of science databases were searched for studies published up to 10 August 2021 without language limitation. The fixed and random effects models were selected to aggregate the effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in this study.
resultsA total of nine observational studies involving 189,817 participants were included. Results from this meta-analysis showed that the highest category of spicy food intake significantly increased the risk of overweight/obesity (pooled Odds Ratio (OR): 1.17; 95% CI: 1.07, 1.28; P < 0.001), compared with the lowest category of spicy food intake. Conversely, a remarkable negative association was observed between the highest category of spicy food intake and hypertension (pooled OR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.81, 0.93; P = 0.307). In addition, the highest category of spicy food intake increased the level of low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) (weighted mean difference (WMD): 0.21; 95% CI: 0.02, 0.39; P = 0.040), and reduced high density lipoprotein cholesterol level (HDL-C) (WMD: -0.06; 95% CI: -0.10, -0.02; P = 0.268) concentrations, but it was not related to total cholesterol (TC) (WMD: 0.09; 95% CI: -0.08, 0.26; P = 0.071) and triglyceride (TG) (WMD: -0.08; 95% CI: -0.19, 0.02; P = 0.333)] levels.
conclusionSpicy food intake may have a beneficial effect on hypertension, but adversely affect overweight/obesity, as well as blood lipid levels. However, the results should be interpreted cautiously because the present analyses were based on only observational studies and not intervention studies. More large and high-quality studies in different populations will be needed to verify these associations in the future.
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