Hacker Remix

Diets high in advanced glycation end products promote insulin resistance

61 points by Matrixik 1 week ago | 45 comments

selbyk 5 days ago

For others who also don't know what advanced glycation end-products are/are a bit confused by the headline:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-produ...

Found in humans, they are bio markers for quite a few diseases, including diabetes (type 2 = insulin resistance).

Food sources are animal products.

Wiki says vegetarians have been shown to have more than non-vegetarians, discounting dietary reasons for high levels in humans. This study suggests otherwise.

narrator 5 days ago

What's interesting about them is that if you microwave your food, you get fewer of them[1]. That's because they are primarily produced by the mallard reaction which is caused by food, such as bread, getting toasted[2]. The worst foods for this are barbecued stuff. Also, carmel color is very rich in advanced glycation end products, so avoid Diet Coke!

[1]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3704564/

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

JumpCrisscross 5 days ago

> they are primarily produced by the mallard reaction

Hmm, I wonder if the propensity to poach, velvet or steam meats aligns with some of the discrepancies we see in diabetes and longevity among otherwise similarly-eating populations.

kylehotchkiss 4 days ago

> also, carmel color is very rich in advanced glycation end products, so avoid Diet Coke!

Interesting, why can't all of chemistry not provide a better formulation for darkening Coke? is there something difficult to mask in there?

saulpw 4 days ago

I would bet money there are many different ways to color a beverage similarly. But I would bet even more money that Coca-Cola won't ever change its formula, and especially not based on dietary research. When there's public paranoia and sales suffer, they'll introduce something like Coke Plus in an effort to win over a more health-conscious market. They'll keep making Coke Classic same as it ever was and keep selling it to everyone else.

aitchnyu 4 days ago

Why do caramelized or otherwise 'yarded foods please us then?

dunham 5 days ago

The infographic in the article suggests they occur in aged cheeses, fried foods (including chips and french fries), roasted nuts (including peanut butter), and seared tofu. I believe those are all vegetarian staples.

swiftcoder 5 days ago

The infographic also blames it on seared meats and fried eggs, so not exclusively an issue for vegetarians. The link to diet in general does seem a little tenuous though?

numbsafari 5 days ago

My takeaway from this was to consider not only the food product of choice, but the cooking method. It may be the cooking method is more important than the food choices themselves?

Perhaps, if you are a vegetarian that eats lots of fried, sauteed, or roasted vegetables (chasing umami), you might be no better off than a non-vegetarian who is consuming predominantly raw, steamed, or boiled animal products.

Anecdotally, this would correlate with the many obese or poorly nourished vegetarians I have known, despite their "healthy" diet.

In any event, we should all be eating more fiber.

dunham 5 days ago

Yeah, I just thought "Food sources are animal products" might be an inaccurate characterization.

As far as the link to diet goes, I'm not an expert but look at pretty much every report with suspicion unless there is a lot of independent confirmation.

From the outside "meta-analysis" seems like fishing for signal and then jumping on results as causal. But I honestly don't know if these things proceed via scientific method (I have a theory, I've devised this test, etc) or are digging up possible relations between data and then making a story to match whatever pops up.

echelon 5 days ago

Don't over-cook your food. AGEs, PAHs, etc. are all bad.

alliao 5 days ago

but how else will we get that sweet sweet aroma from Maillard reaction....

numbsafari 5 days ago

Cook it sous vide and then give it a quick sear.

Everything in moderation.

tjohns 4 days ago

The “quick sear” is specifically what causes the Maillard reaction though!

numbsafari 3 days ago

> Everything in moderation.

reducesuffering 4 days ago

> Cook it sous vide

Then you're getting heated plastic?

aitchnyu 4 days ago

Is sous equivalent to an Instant Pot set to a lower temperature and at atmospheric pressure?

positr0n 2 days ago

It kind of could be for some meals maybe, but not really.

What people love about sous vide is that you can cook a steak to 135 or whatever exact temperature you desire then sear it. To do that you need both circulating water (to make sure the water bath is exact everywhere) and plastic (so half the meat flavor doesn't leach out into the water bath.

Matrixik 1 week ago

Original paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39320860/

jawon 5 days ago

This definition of AGEs is interesting (linked from the article, same site):

"Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) form when proteins and fats (lipids) in the body react with sugar (glucose) and become glycated and oxidized."

So, maybe it's not so much the Maillard reaction but that sweetened brioche bun used in your fancy hamburger.

chongli 5 days ago

Or that bag of Doritos washed down with a bottle of Mountain Dew!

HumanOstrich 5 days ago

That's how AGEs are formed in the body. The article is primarily about dietary intake of AGEs that are formed in high temperatures with certain foods.

BJones12 5 days ago

For the uninitiated in Advanced Glycation Ends (AGEs):

> AGEs can also be ingested from food, especially food cooked at high temperatures and with little moisture, like grilled meats, fried foods, and baked goods.[23] The Maillard reaction is the main nonenzymatic reaction known to form AGEs in cooking and is famously known for the distinct browning color and complex flavor and aroma of roasted coffee, French fries, seared meat, and other favorites.

eptcyka 5 days ago

In short, if it tastes nice and was man-processed, it probably will be bad for you?

tjohns 5 days ago

That's a good first-order approximation, but is missing some nuance.

An example they use is eggs: Pan-fried eggs are listed as high in AGEs, whereas scrambled eggs aren't. Admittedly my diet isn't the best, but I wouldn't have expected a meaningful difference between ordering my eggs scrambled vs sunnyside-up.

Or for meat, stewed meat would be healthier than roasted meat.

I'm suddenly curious about coffee, now that they mention it...

formerly_proven 5 days ago

Scrambled eggs don't have any browning, sunny side up does.

UncleOxidant 5 days ago

That depends. Some people like to brown their scrambled eggs a bit.

moab 5 days ago

Coffee is very low in AGEs as per Table 2 of https://www.jandonline.org/article/S0002-8223(10)00238-5/ful...

eptcyka 5 days ago

The browning is what makes food taste great for me, and that is what makes sunny side up eggs be less healthy. If you browned an omlette, it’d have a similar effect, I imagine.

saurik 5 days ago

I mean, the nuance seemed captured by the "in short" here, as you are just providing examples of things that taste nicer ;P.

TeMPOraL 5 days ago

Well, it was good for us when we first tamed fire, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Ain't greater modern cargo cult than "healthy food".

tjohns 4 days ago

People didn’t live very long when we first tamed fire - not because of diet, but because something else in nature would eventually get you first. So it didn’t really matter what early humans ate as long as it gave them immediate energy.

People only needed to live long enough to reproduce, and that’s what our bodies are optimized for. Most people would prefer to live longer, though. ;)