Grilled and fried food may raise Alzheimer's risk, study finds
It's not just what we eat, but how we cook it, that influences our health as we grow older
Swapping that grilled beef burger for beef stew, or having poached salmon instead of fish and chips, could benefit more than just your waistline. New research suggests that avoiding foods that have been fried, grilled or smoked could help keep your risk of Alzheimer's disease in check.
According to the study, published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease earlier this month, the culprit lies in a group of compounds called advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that are formed when foods are cooked or processed using high temperatures, or aged for a long time (such as hard cheese).
Based on data from clinical studies involving 19 countries, estimates of AGEs in national diets were found to "correspond well" with Alzheimer's disease prevalence, say researchers from the University of Poitiers in France and San Francisco's Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Centre.
In typical national diets, meat made the highest contribution of AGEs, followed by vegetable oils, cheese and fish, according to the study report. Foods such as cereals/grains, eggs, fruit, legumes, milk, nuts, starchy roots and vegetables generally make low contributions to the total amount of AGEs in a diet, either because they are generally prepared at low temperatures or they comprise smaller portions of diets.
In their analysis, the researchers used AGE values of many types of food from a 2010 study by scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. The Icahn scientists had cooked 549 foods using different methods: boiling (100 degrees Celsius), grilling (225 degrees), deep-frying (180 degrees), oven-frying (230 degrees) and roasting (177 degrees).
