New study reveals specific way of cooking food could be more dangerous than you realise
How you cook your food can have an impact of how healthy or unhealthy it is, and there's one method of cooking which can make things less healthy.
Having a balanced diet is very important in keeping yourself fit and healthy.
But one particular way of cooking food could introduce compounds which make it less healthy, even with healthier foods.
And no, before you guess, it's not deep frying though the large amount of fat this involves means that it's not great for you either.
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Doctors and dieticians have stressed the importance of watching what you eat, but a new study has found that this method of cooking can also have an adverse effect on how healthy a given food is.
This is when you cook something using high and dry heat.
You know, the method that makes everything taste the best.
It comes down to the Maillard reaction, where sugars and proteins in a food react with the high dry heat to produce delicious crust, most notably on a steak.
But experts have now warned that cooking things using these methods also gives off some harmful compounds such as advanced glycation end products (AGEs).
This is most common on any food which has been browned or charred, including vegetables, by being grilled, roasted, fried, or barbecued.
When AGEs begin to increase in the body they can be associated with inflammation and other health issues such as stiffness, diabetes, heart disease, diabetes, and memory problems.
According to the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke in higher levels AGEs can even lead to kidney disease and even Alzheimer's.
Ed McCormick is a food science consultant from New Jersey, and told the New York Post: "Eating more from very browned foods will add to the collective load of oxidative and inflammatory stress overall."
Eating more charred and browned foods also increases the risk of cancer, the National Cancer Institute has warned.
McCormick also warned that bacon and cheese toppings as well as marbled meat and skin-on chicken could see higher levels of AGEs.
But it's not just the cooking method as adding sauces with sugars such as glazes or barbecue sauce could make it even worse.
Of course, there is a way around this - cooking things using water.
Methods such as boiling, poaching, steaming, or stewing can help to lower the risk of AGE formations.
A study from 2013 found that it could reduce the levels by up to 50 percent.
You could also try soaking your meat in vinegar or citrus juice for an hour before cooking to reduce AGE levels, if you fancied a steak that tasted like vinegar.
So there you have it - living off steamed broccoli and boiled chicken breast could help you to live longer, though with that diet you may not want to.
Kit Roberts