A NEW WEIGHT-LOSS REMEDY: HOT SAUCE

Eating fire could help you torch your gut. Australian scientists recently determined that overweight people are more likely to burn blubber after consuming a meal that contains chili peppers than after one that isn’t packing heat. That’s because study participants’ levels of insulin—a hormone that signals your body to store fat—were 32 percent lower following the spicy meal. Capsaicin, the chemical that makes chili peppers hot, may improve the liver’s ability to clear insulin from the bloodstream after a meal, says study author Madeleine J. Ball, M.D. Although the researchers used high amounts of capsaicin in the study, you can get some of the benefit simply by dousing your dinner with as much Tabasco sauce as you can handle.