Spicy food consumption is associated with adiposity measures among half a million Chinese people: the China Kadoorie Biobank study

BMC Public Health

Liming Li³  Zhengming Chen⁵  Junshi Chen²  Yunlong Tan³  Huiyan Zhou³  Canqing Yu⁴  Zheng Bian³  Yu Guo³  Shengxu Li¹  Wei Chen¹  Jun Lv⁴  Dianjianyi Sun⁴ 

[1] Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA;China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, Beijing, China;Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China;Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, 38 Xueyuan Road, Beijing 100191, China;Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, UK, Old Road Campus, Oxford OX3 7LF, UK

关键词: Central obesity;    Body mass index;    Spicy food intake;   

Others  :  1091998
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-14-1293

 received in 2014-10-06, accepted in 2014-12-11,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Few animal experiments and volunteer-based intervention studies have showed a controversial effect of spicy foods on weight management; however, information is scant on the association between spicy food intake and obesity. This study aims to examine the impact of spicy food on quantitative adiposity measures in the Chinese population; a population with a low prevalence of general obesity, but a high prevalence of central obesity.

Methods

A total of 434,556 adults (255,094 females), aged 30–79 years, were included from the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) study. Information on spicy food intake was obtained using a questionnaire survey. Body mass index (BMI), percentage body fat (BF%), waist circumference (WC), and WC/height ratio (WHtR) were analyzed as continuous variables.

Results

The prevalence of daily spicy food eating was 30.4% in males and 30.0% in females, with dramatically geographic diversity (ranging from 99.4% in Hunan to 2.7% in Zhejiang). The covariates-adjusted BMI, BF%, WC, and WHtR significantly increased with increasing frequency, strength, and duration of spicy food eating regardless of gender (p < 0.001). Among regular spicy food consumers, strength of spicy food eating showed significant and positive association with all adiposity measures in both genders (except for BF% in males). Compared with non-consumers, daily spicy food eating was significantly associated with an increase of 0.44 and 0.51 of BMI (kg/m²), 0.79 and 1.01 of BF%, 1.4 and 1.0 of WC (cm), and 0.008 and 0.006 of WHtR in males and females, respectively. In stratified analyses of 18 consecutive BMI subgroups, a significantly increasing trend in the effect of daily spicy food eating on WC and WHtR with increasing BMI was noted in males; whereas a decreasing trend was seen in females.

Conclusions

The data indicate that spicy food intake is a risk factor for obesity in Chinese adult population, especially for central obesity in males. Further studies are needed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying this association.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Sun et al.; licensee BioMed Central.

【 图 表 】

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