Dear Health Conscious Reader,
Ever go to a restaurant where they refuse to cook your steak medium rare?
The warning that your meat is not safe unless you cook it until it’s dry and brown is bad advice. It’s not justified by the facts and cooking your food that way can cause arthritis, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
This indiscriminate overcooking of food is a bad idea. It denatures protein, breaks down vitamins and removes nutrients. Now I’ve uncovered an even more serious concern. Many cooking techniques that achieve a high temperature trigger a chemical change called glycation that mimics aging. New studies have linked eating these foods to premature aging and a host of chronic diseases.
Imagine overcooked food. It becomes dry, wrinkled, hard, blistered, and discolored. That same process is occurring in your body each time you consume foods cooked improperly.
What I’m talking about here is the process of glycation. Glycation is what happens to the proteins in our body as we age. Also the same process turns a turkey’s skin brown and crispy when it is cooked.
Glycation is really the binding of protein and glucose molecules. The result is a spoiled protein assembly. These deviants are glycotoxins. And glycotoxins are responsible for accelerated aging and disease.
As the glycotoxins accumulate in your cells, they send out chemical signals. The body responds by producing sites of inflammation. In addition, the abnormal protein structures do not regenerate. They remain damaged. This is the process of aging and disease.
When we cook foods at high temperatures, large amounts of glycotoxins collect in the food. A new study demonstrated that if we eat these foods, the glycotoxins transfer to our tissues.
Researchers at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine evaluated 24 diabetic participants. Scientists split the subjects into two groups. One group ate a diet low in glycotoxins. The other group ate a diet high in glycotoxins.
After only 2 weeks, the group eating the high-glycotoxin diet had up to 100% more glycotoxins present in their blood and urine that those who ate the low-glycotoxin diet.1
This is clear evidence that the glycotoxins from your food transfer into your body.
Overcooking has another negative consequence. It denatures many important nutrients in food. One of the best examples is CoQ10. You need CoQ10 for proper functioning of all of the major organs in your body. CoQ10 is a red pigment. The best source of CoQ10 is red meat. Overcooking meat destroys CoQ10.
Just by changing a few cooking habits, you can enjoy good food, without the danger. And you can add a supplement to your routine that fights glycation.
Better Cooking: High-heat cooking methods usually cause food to change color or consistency. We like this kind of cooking because it makes the food tasty. But if you want to stay young and healthy, hold back on these cooking methods:
- Fried
- Microwaved
- Broiled
- Charred
You can reduce the number of glycotoxins in your food by cooking it at a lower heat. But low heat doesn’t have to be low in taste. Use spices and fresh herbs to boost the taste of meals cooked at lower heat. Whenever you cook food, use the following methods:
- Steam
- Stew
- Boiling
- Poaching
My colleague Lee Euler has uncovered an overlooked ingredient that helps your body cope with glycation. They help digestion and cool the fire of inflammation. I’m talking about digestive enzymes. And there’s another important angle – high heat damages enzymes the same way it damages CoQ10. So while overcooking creates toxins, it destroys these valuable nutrients that occur naturally in most foods. The less you cook your food, the richer in enzymes it will be.
Lee’s research on digestive enzymes is remarkable:
- A man with kidney cancer, given days to live was alive and well 15 years later thanks to adding digestive enzymes to his daily routine.
- Digestive enzymes relieved the pain of 9 out of 10 rheumatoid arthritis sufferers.
- Health and behavior improved in 9 out of 10 children with autism.
- Studies show they thin blood, break up blood clots and heal inflamed blood vessels.
- One mother said her lifelong migraine problem disappeared immediately.
- Complete recoveries from long-term digestive issues like indigestion, bloating, IBS, gas, diarrhea, constipation and cramps.
- A woman with breast cancer was alive and well 16 years later.
Lee is an authority on digestive enzymes and knows how to get the most from them. When he sent me his latest book, “The Missing Ingredient for Good Health,” I was impressed. In it he shows you how digestive enzymes work, which ones to take and how they heal your body in ways you probably never imagined.
The power of digestive enzymes will surprise you. They go far beyond digestion.
I recommend you check out Lee’s book. I consider it a “must read.”
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
- Vlassara H., et al. Inflammatory mediators are induced by dietary glycotoxins, a major risk factor for diabetic angiopathy. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2003 Jan 21; 100(2): 763.