Move Over Kale, Jalapeños Are The Health Food You Never Knew About

The next time you’re making salsa, try making it extra spicy. It turns out that jalapeños have several health benefits you’ve probably never heard about.

Nutritious Jalapeños

Besides adding flavor to your food, jalapeños are nutritious. They are high in both Vitamins C and B6, and they are a good source of fiber.

Additionally, jalapeños contain antioxidants. Antioxidants fight free radicals, which are waste substances that our cells produce. Free radicals cause damage to cells and can lead to cancer, heart disease, strokes, arthritis, and other health issues. Antioxidants can slow or prevent damage to cells caused by free radicals.

Capsaicin

Jalapeños also contain capsaicin. This alkaloid is what makes peppers hot, and it also carries its own health benefits. Capsaicin is known for its pain-relieving properties. It diminishes a person’s perception of their pain by affecting neurotransmitters.

Capsaicin can be extracted from peppers and used in topical creams, gels, and patches for pain relief. People have used capsaicin creams to treat the pain associated with different forms of arthritis, including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia. 

Diabetes can cause nerve damage called diabetic neuropathy. Its symptoms include pain, tingling, and weakness. Capsaicin cream is one treatment for the pain caused by diabetic neuropathy.

People may also use capsaicin cream to stave off the extremely painful headaches caused by migraines. And capsaicin cream can be applied to treat common muscle pain caused by strain, sprains, or athletics.

Adding Jalapeños to Your Diet

With all of their health benefits, it’s understandable that you’d want to add more jalapeños to your diet. There is an abundance of ways to do this, including:

• chopping them up and adding them to salsas
• pickling jalapeños to use as a condiment
• cooking them into entrees
• baking them into bread for a surprise kick
• adding them to omelets or egg casseroles
• infusing oils with jalapeños
• cutting out the middle of jalapeños and stuffing them with meat, cheese, or rice

You should always be careful when handling jalapeños. When cutting them up, wear gloves and discard them after you finish. This will keep you from accidentally rubbing jalapeño oil into your eyes, causing painful burning.

Remove both the membranes and seeds from the middle of the jalapeños before you cook them. These are the spiciest part and may be too hot for many people to eat. If a dish containing jalapeños is too spicy, drink milk to reduce the burning in your mouth.

As long as you use caution, you should be able to safely enjoy adding these peppers to your diet. You can relish both the added flavor and the knowledge that eating jalapeños is doing good things for your health!