--- title: Are Hot Sauce and Chili Peppers Healthy? description: Hot sauce is healthy for its anti-inflammatory properties and also helps protect against cancer canonical: https://time.com/4133939/hot-sauce-chili-peppers/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-12-03T15:53:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:45.962Z article:section: Health og:title: This One Condiment Instantly Improves Your Diet og:description: Hot sauce is healthy for its anti-inflammatory properties and also helps protect against cancer og:url: https://time.com/4133939/hot-sauce-chili-peppers/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0f72e51f54677356/698873973c1639856e45afd2/chili-pepper.png?branch=production&width=1093&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1093 og:image:height: 615 og:image:alt: chili pepper og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This One Condiment Instantly Improves Your Diet twitter:description: Hot sauce is healthy for its anti-inflammatory properties and also helps protect against cancer twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0f72e51f54677356/698873973c1639856e45afd2/chili-pepper.png?branch=production&width=1093&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This One Condiment Instantly Improves Your Diet > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Should I Drink Tomato Juice? [Watch (HLS stream): Should I Drink Tomato Juice?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/IzSdsTxN.m3u8) (1:31)  _Published 2015-05-27. At 30,000 feet, tomato juice is almost as popular as beer, the top-selling beverage on planes. But its health benefits are more up in the air, our experts say._  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 3, 2015 3:53 PM UTC  Photo by Aka Photo-Illustration TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 3, 2015 3:53 PM UTC Scientists aren’t typically the most emotional bunch, so it gets awkward when David Popovich’s colleagues walk by and see him crying at his desk. Then, they notice his bottle of extra-hot hot sauce. “I put it on everything,” says Popovich, who studies the bioactive compounds in plants and is a senior lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand. And so should you, because according to two top pepper experts, hot sauce is healthy. That’s largely thanks to capsaicin—the active ingredient in peppers—which has shown antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticancer effects in lab studies. A paper published [this summer](http://time.com/3984274/spicy-food-chili-peppers/) looking at half a million Chinese adults found that those who who ate spicy foods three or more times a week had a 14% reduced risk of death, compared to those who didn’t eat much spicy food. In his own lab experiments using cancer cells, when Popovich puts capsaicin on top, cell growth is reduced. Scientists don’t know the mechanism by which capsaicin appears to work in the body. But one prominent theory, says Popovich, is that it triggers something called apoptosis: a kind of cell “suicide” that encourages the turnover of cells—some with mutations—to be recycled into new cells. “That’s one of the ways scientists think capsaicin and other active compounds in vegetables can prevent cancer development: by stimulating apoptotic cell death,” Popovich says. **MORE**: [Why You Should Blame Millennials For Spicy Fast Food](http://time.com/3633813/spicy-food-testosterone/) The more fiery the pepper, the greater its capsaicin content. But that doesn’t mean the fieriest is the healthiest. Capsaicin hogs the credit for peppers’ healthy attributes but new science is showing that it’s actually the interaction of capsaicin with other compounds in peppers that makes it so good for you, says José de Jesús Ornelas-Paz, who is also a researcher of vegetable bioactive compounds and professor at the Research Center for Food and Development in Mexico. “Pungent peppers are a cocktail of bioactive compounds,” he says, and capsaicin depends on them for its health benefits. “Blending, cutting and cooking improve the release of \[these compounds\] from pepper tissue, increasing the amount available for absorption,” Paz says, so you get the goods even when the pepper is pulverized and bottled. It’s best, believe it or not, to eat it with a little fat. “Capsaicin is a fat-soluble molecule,” Popovich says. Pair it with oil, and the body can absorb more than if were paired with, say, raw vegetables. Of course, read the label before you buy. Watch out for sweetened chili sauce, like sriracha, which contains added sugar, and make sure it doesn’t contain too much sodium. Popovich’s ideal hot sauce has red habanero peppers, vinegar, a little bit of salt and some garlic. Embrace the hot sauce rainbow, says Paz; each color has different delicious carotenoids. “The bottom line is that any kind of vegetable material you consume will improve your health,” Popovich says. “But hot peppers are really beneficial for you, if you can take the spice.” [_Read Next: Is Quinoa Worth The Health Hype?_](http://time.com/4052489/quinoa-health-benefits-nutrition/) ## Transcript At 30 thousand feet tomato juice is almost as popular as beer in airplane's top selling beverage. But it's health benefits are more up in the air our experts say. Here's my 3 / 5 experts gives tomato juice the thumbs up. [ MUSIC ] Most tomato juice has added salt at a rather shocking concentration says David Katz. The standard 8 oz can packs 670 mg of sodium. About the same amount as 4 bags of chips. The real draw of tomato juice is lycopene An antioxidant that can lower risk of stroke, prostate cancer, and metabolic diseases. Americans get more than 80 % of their lycopene from tomatoes in their various forms. You're set if you often eat tomatoes, especially the kind cooked and with a little healthy fat, say Steven Schwartz and Robin Ralston. But the same health beneficial compounds in tomatoes are also in tomato juice. Substituting tomato juice for unhealthy beverages is a good way to get the benefits of lycopene, says Pei- Min Chao. In a 2015 study, Chao found a link between tomato juice and reduced body fat, body weight, BMI and blood cholesterol levels in women. A randomized controlled trial by Gity Sotoudeh They found out tomato juice reduces oxidative stress and overweight women. If you're jonesing for the juice, your best bet is to follow Deborah Cohen's recipe for the real thing. 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