Add a Little Spice to Your Raw Diet

Adding some spice to your raw meals not only enhances the flavors of the food but is good for your health.  Cayenne pepper is a type of chili peppers. Cayenne was named after a city in French Guiana where it was commonly grown. The active ingredient in cayenne is capsaicin, which is what gives chili peppers their heat. The more capsaicin in a pepper the hotter it is to our taste buds.

Ceyanne pepper has many health benefits from lowering blood pressure to alleviating arthritis pain. It can help prevent ulcers and opens congested nasal passages. It also helps the body expel harmful LDL cholesterol and triglycerides and aids digestion.

On March 16, 2006, the wire service Reuters reported that researchers discovered that capsaicin destroyed prostate cancer cells. “Capsaicin led 80 percent of human prostate cancer cells growing in mice to commit suicide in a process known as apoptosis,” the researchers revealed in the medical journal Cancer Research. “Prostate cancer tumors in mice fed capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumors in untreated mice.” Dr. Soren Lehmann of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, added, “Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture.”

But while cayenne and chili peppers have gotten the lion’s share of notoriety over their health benefits, less attention has been paid to that old standard of every dinner table, black pepper, which is just as much of a miracle food. The ancient Greeks valued black pepper so much it was sometimes used at currency as well as a seasoning.

Black pepper comes from the pepper vine. It takes about three or four years for the plant to mature and begin producing berries known as peppercorns. Grinding the peppercorns produces black pepper as we know it.  Black pepper is high in manganese, Vitamin K, iron, and dietary fiber

When we eat black pepper, it signals the stomach to increase its hydrochloric acid secretion, which improves digestion. Without sufficient hydrochloric acid, food may remain in the stomach for an extended period of time, causing heartburn or indigestion; or it can get delayed in the intestines, causing gas, diarrhea, or constipation.

Black pepper is a potent antioxidant and besides its nutritional value, the outer layer of the peppercorn stimulates the breakdown of fat cells which can help in weight loss.