Study shows anti-obesity potential of Capsaicin

GeekHealth.org has covered peppers and capsaicin in the past, now we have some good scientific study data to share with you on this easy to acquire chemical compound.

A study done on rats, has found very positive results when feeding rats 10 mg of capsaicin per kg of body weight.

http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/pr901175w?cookieSet=1

The study, led by Dr. Jong Won Yun from Daegu University, showed the capsaicin treatments caused weight loss in lab rats by up to eight percent.  This reduction seems to be linked to the effect of capsaicin on certain proteins in fat, as well as other metabolic chemicals.

For a human to consume the amount of capsaicin discussed in the paper, you need to keep this in mind: the amount of capsaicin in peppers is very low compared to the overall weight of the pepper itself.

In a study of Habanero peppers (link),  it was found that the total amount of capsaicin was about 10mg/g.  “The total capsaicinoids extracted from oven dried Cunningham peppers ranged from 8.85 – 14.03 mg/g of dry tissue and those from Bailey Farm peppers varied between 9.41 and 11.61 mg/g of dry tissue.”

This means that for an “average” adult US male (link) weighing 190lbs (86kg), you would need a daily dose of 860 mg of capsaicin.  If you only ate dried Habanero’s (one of the worlds hottest peppers) you would still need to eat 86 grams of the powder.  That comes out to just around 10 full tablespoons of pure habanero powder!