Chemical in pepper can burn fat

All over the world, most people are trying to lose weight in many ways that may seem ineffective. For example, those who try to take diet pills soon realize that the pills either don’t speed up your metabolism and make you burn calories or it just increases your weight. The article, “A pepper part that burns fat” by Stephen Ornes, explains how in recent studies, scientists have discovered a chemical that can help your body burn calories. This chemical is called “dihydrocapsiate” and it comes from a type of pepper. In fact, according to the article, dihydrocapsiate is the cousin of a chemical called “capsaicin” which gives the “hot” effect to chili peppers. Since dihydrocapsiate is a chemical in a type of pepper, then it must have some type of “sizzling or burning” effect that can cause the body to burn more energy. However, this chemical does not cause the body to feel a burning pain. This is because like most hot chemicals, it will “stimulate” the receptors in your mouth to cause pain, but since dihydrocapsiate is too big to enter the receptors, then it passes through the body without pain. One interesting experiment that scientists did was to test to see if the chemical worked by having some people take pills that contained dihydrocapsiate , and others to take pills that are only used for experiments and have no affect. This pill is called a placebo. In the end, scientists concluded that people who took the dihydrocapsiate pills lost more weight than people who took the placebo.

This article relates to the science concepts of metabolism and calories, which has to do with the human body in some ways. Metabolism is basically the process needed in order for your body to maintain a healthy diet, which includes breaking down foods in order to make energy. There are about two different types of metabolism. A person can have a high- metabolism, or a low- metabolism. People with high- metabolisms tend to be able to eat more products and breaking down more food without gaining all the fats. Low- metabolism is just the exact opposite of high- metabolism. A calorie is the type of measurement for the energy in food. Apparently, these are vital concepts for this article since dihydrocapsiate has to do with helping people lose weight by burning the calories. Therefore, this article is definitely relevant in science, especially biology.

This article is important because it explains a discovery that could help certain people dealing with issues to lose weight. Not only is it important for those type of people to know, but also everyone because it has to do with our bodies and chemicals that could affect it. It is strange how even some types of peppers can help stimulate one’s ability to burn calories. This is also important because it teaches people about the concepts calorie and metabolism in an informative way. I personally thought this article was interesting. Even the title catches one’s eye.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59289/title/FOR_KIDS_A_pepper_part_that_burns_fat