CHANGE THE WAY YOU COOK, SLOW YOUR RATE OF AGING

Twenty years of professional cooking, and mentoring of professional cooks has taught me skills that inspire wonder in my middle aged friends.  I could write a book on how to perfectly roast, saute, grill, fry, or caramelize anything from potatoes to  duck breast to rump roasts. 

There is more and more proof that these very techniques of browning our meats, caramelizing our onions, and garlic; french frying our potatoes, slow sauteing of veggies to brown them, roasting our turkey to golden brown, toasting our bread, and blackening our louisiana redfish, grilling our burgers over high heat are at the very causative heart of unhealthy aging. It is not good enough to pack your daily diet with all the antioxidants and nutritious whole grains that you can prepare and serve your health conscious family. The techniques that you use to cook these items, techniques made famous by almost all TV cooking show chefs, and two hundred years of Americans trying to gain mastery over classic french cooking skills, are equally critical.

Browning of high fat foods, such as red meat( worse if dusted in high glycemic flour, hot dogs, and bacon, or high glycemic vegetables such as onions or carrots, slow dry smoking of your baby back ribs can accelerate your visible aging, and more critically your cellular aging.  The browning process exposes the sugar in  a protein to a high temperature which caramelizes the natural sugars in the food, and gives it that beautiful caramel color. 

When a sugar binds with a protein, advanced glycation end products or AGE's are formed.  AGE's  compromise the effective functioning of particular proteins, and AGE's build up in the body over time: as more and more proteins are compromised (tissues, hormones enzmes, antibodies, nerve cells), your aging accelerates because the proteins can no longer function perfectly as they were designed: as they replicate imperfectly damage is done: aging is accelerated.  Our body and brain becomes a house of cards. Eliminating AGE's in the diet (there are other sources which I will discuss in other posts) should be at the top of anyone's list if they are concerned with avoiding cardiovascular disease,slowing the rate of their aging, or avoiding Alzheimers, diabetes, dementia.

   Many cooks pride themselves on black grill marks; many chefs like to "char": some chefs like to put blackened fish items on their menus: Avoid all of these.  Charring has been conclusively shown to be carcinogenic.  Avoid charbroiled ANYTHING !

Cooking starchy vegetables at high heat also produces AGE's or glycation as it is being simply addressed.  That is the problem with french fries. French frying of potatoes or yams or  produces AGE's and acrylamide. Acrylamide, also found in potato chips is strongly associated with developing cancer. Even FDA researchers found that it damages DNA and cell proteins, and creates a first step to cancer. Acrylamide is not present in uncooked foods.  It is not formed, however when you boil a potato.  The good news is coming, hang in there.  

I am crying over the french fries too !

Roasting our chickens and turkeys to a golden brown may be tasty, but the browned skins are a significant source of AGE's. The crusting of fish in seeds or nuts, very popular in the last ten years, is another category to avoid.  Foods that naturally have higher fat levels generate more AGE's: it is not the fact that foods may be sauteed or grilled, or broiled or roasted alone.  The damage comes from temperature , whether high, or low for long time , that produces browning. The worse damage occurs, especially  when high fat foods are  cooked at high temperature or for long periods of time.

There are many cooking techniques that do not produce or promote, or accelerate AGE's. Marinating protein foods, or cooking them in liquid, does not promote glycation.  Skewer smaller cuts of meat, fish, chicken, or vegetables will cook faster and avoid AGE formation; poaching in flavored stocks, gentle steaming. For stirfries, cut all ingredients smaller; enjoy soups and stews; choose fatty fish,organic chicken, or turkey ONLY  (no antibiotics or hormones) and grass fed beef, cook onions and garlic til transparent.  Saute over medium heat, not high heat, and avoid browning the vegetables.  Always try to cook using gentle heat.

Two years ago as the first of the baby boomers turned 60 years of age,  volumes of research data on aging, inflammation, and discovering just what accelerates or slows or rate of aging have been everywhere from the internet to the front table of the national bookstores.  We have learned that our daily food choices play a very significant role in just how well or how poorly we are aging.  A greater and greater number of big city restaurant menus are reflecting our new awareness: most  feature on a regular basis Salmon for it's anti-aging benefits, and it's sustainability: other nutritional powerhouses are becoming commonplace like  quinoa, wheat berries, grapeseed oil.  Plate presentations are  'going green": less center of the plate protein, and more veggies: recognizing the now well accepted virtues of a plant rich diet .

It is not good enough to pack your daily diet with all the antioxidants and nutritious whole grains that you can prepare and serve your health conscious family.  The techniques that you use to cook these items, techniques made famous by almost all TV cooking show chefs, and two hundred years of Americans trying to gain mastery over classic french cooking skills, are just as important in keeping you healthy.  Never forget, you are what you eat, and how it's cooked !