Visceral fat is commonly known as belly fat. It’s found inside a person’s abdominal cavity and wraps around the internal organs. To lose your belly fat, eating meals with more ginger or chilli peppers could help burn belly fat and reduce your risk of serious health consequences.
Ginger, a spice that is extracted from the flowering ginger plant, Zingiber officinale, has been shown to reduce the harmful belly fat, for example.
A small study found that people who consumed ginger stayed fuller for longer as compared to those who did not. Ginger also has a significant effect on the hip to waist ratio.
Gingerols in ginger also stabilize blood sugar levels.
In a study published in the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, the effects of ginger intake on weight loss in overweight and obese subjects was analysed.
The study noted: “This systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was performed to summarize the effect of ginger intake on weight loss, glycaemic control and lipid profiles among overweight and obese subjects.
“Overall, the current meta-analysis demonstrated that ginger intake reduced body weight, waist to hip ratio, hip ratio, fasting glucose, but did not affect insulin, BMI, triglycerides, total- and LDL-cholesterol levels.”
The study showed that supplementing with ginger significantly decreased both body weight and belly fat.
Known as diet-induced thermogenesis, this process helps to burn belly fat because it means a person burns up calories automatically rather than storing them.
Researchers at Canada’s Laval University suggest that a key chemical contained in chillies could boost the body’s ability to burn fat and curb one’s appetite all in all helping to get rid of visceral fat.
Capsaicin is the chemical that gives chillies and chilli-based spices such as cayenne and paprika their characteristic pungency and also stimulates a natural process whereby some of the food we eat at each meal is converted immediately to heat.
Scientists have found that diet-induced thermogenesis usually uses up carbohydrates, with various studies showing that we produce more heat after a high-carbohydrate meal.
