Cooking With Lower Gas Is Better For You

Evidence of oxidative stress and inflammatory mediators like C-reactive protein, or CRP increase in the body with aging. It seems that there are ‘pro-oxidant’ substances called advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) that are associated with chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which also increase with age. And AGEs are readily derived from heat-treated foods. So researchers at Mount Sinai, New York, asked the question “Does consumption of AGEs in the food increase oxidative stress and inflammatory responses in humans, especially older people?” The next question, obviously, was “Does high-temperature cooking increase the levels of AGEs in consumers of these foods?”

Some answers are given in their publication in the Journal of Gerontology. First the researchers examined groups of older (over 60) and younger (under 45) volunteers, to see whether the concentrations of AGEs are higher in older than in younger people. This was indeed the case. They also found that the consumption of AGEs was higher, and the CRP levels were higher in the older group of people. They concluded that unwitting AGE consumption may be responsible, in part, for increased risks of age-related diseases. And, although the study didn’t examine this experimentally, it’s accepted that heat-treating food causes their formation. So, it makes sense to try to reduce the cooking temperature, doesn’t it? It’s really going to be necessary to find a direct association between the cooking temperature and the presence of chronic disease in older folk to be able to tell people that high-temperature cooking is a bad thing. But, some people may sense this already. As baseball pitcher Satchel Paige once said: “Don’t eat fried foods – it angries up the blood.”