Diet is one of the important factors in cancer etiology and prevention. The Indian diet is particularly interesting in its many unique dietary constituents, including spices like chili pepper, cloves, black pepper and black cumin, that have promise as chemopreventive agents. The objective of the present study was to compare the in vitro anticancer activities of aqueous and ethanolic extracts against the TE-13 (esophageal squamous cell carcinoma) cell line. All extracts showed cytotoxic activity but aqueous extracts were found to be more potent than alcoholic extracts. Morphological analysis, DAPI staining and DNA fragmentation assays showed maximum cell death and apoptotic cell demise (88%) to occur within 24 hours with an aqueous extract of chili pepper at 300 μl/ml.