60 pointsby Matrixik6 days ago9 comments
  • selbyk3 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.

    • narrator3 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

      • JumpCrisscross3 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.

      • kylehotchkiss3 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?

        • saulpw3 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.
      • aitchnyu3 days ago
        Why do caramelized or otherwise 'yarded foods please us then?
    • dunham3 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.
      • swiftcoder3 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?
        • numbsafari3 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.

        • dunham3 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.

    • echelon3 days ago
      Don't over-cook your food. AGEs, PAHs, etc. are all bad.
      • alliao3 days ago
        but how else will we get that sweet sweet aroma from Maillard reaction....
        • numbsafari3 days ago
          Cook it sous vide and then give it a quick sear.

          Everything in moderation.

          • tjohns3 days ago
            The “quick sear” is specifically what causes the Maillard reaction though!
          • reducesuffering3 days ago
            > Cook it sous vide

            Then you're getting heated plastic?

            • aitchnyu3 days ago
              Is sous equivalent to an Instant Pot set to a lower temperature and at atmospheric pressure?
              • positr0n6 hours 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.

  • jawon3 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.

    • chongli3 days ago
      Or that bag of Doritos washed down with a bottle of Mountain Dew!
    • HumanOstrich3 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.
  • BJones123 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.

    • eptcyka3 days ago
      In short, if it tastes nice and was man-processed, it probably will be bad for you?
      • tjohns3 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_proven3 days ago
          Scrambled eggs don't have any browning, sunny side up does.
          • UncleOxidant3 days ago
            That depends. Some people like to brown their scrambled eggs a bit.
        • moab3 days ago
          Coffee is very low in AGEs as per Table 2 of https://www.jandonline.org/article/S0002-8223(10)00238-5/ful...
        • eptcyka3 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.
        • saurik3 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.
      • TeMPOraL3 days ago
        Well, it was good for us when we first tamed fire, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

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

        • tjohns3 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. ;)

  • swiftcoder3 days ago
    I haven't read the full paper, but do they control for fat intake? Because pretty much everything on the "high AGE" side of the infographic is also high in fats, and we already have studies that show high fat diets have a negative effect where diabetes is concerned
  • hetthakkar3 days ago
    Wonder if these negative outcomes still exist if high and low AGE diets were iso-caloric
    • HumanOstrich3 days ago
      No, "calories in, calories out" is a popular myth, usually used as a way to insult and degrade people who are overweight.

      You could drink your body's caloric needs in gasoline each day, but you'd quickly find out that WHAT you consume affects your body's response too. Biology is surprisingly complex.

      • 00N83 days ago
        The "calories in" part is usually understood to mean "metabolically available calories from food (& drink) in a human or other animal's diet". Calories from heat, electricity, gasoline, etc., wouldn't count.

        There can be some edge cases around water retention, foods an individual happens to metabolize more/less effectively than average, & practical considerations like negative-satiety foods (things like candy or beer that contain calories but end up making you more hungry after a short while). Metabolic & activity level changes are another confounding variable one might need to track. But overall the CICO model gives accurate predictions for weight change in most cases as far as I know. I pay attention to my diet & weight & it's been perfectly reliable for me (although maybe that makes me biased to think it's a better model than it really is -- sorry if that's the case)

        Anyway, you'll need to provide some evidence other than a straw-man/non-sequitur about drinking gasoline if you want to convince me CICO is a "myth"

      • FooBarBizBazz3 days ago
        Spreading "cope" hurts other people who read it and believe. Bomb-calorimeter energy is an upper bound on what your body can extract from the food, and limiting an upper bound works.

        But ok, there is a problem with "CICO": Although true, it does psychologically put "CI" and "CO" on an equal footing -- whereas 90% of your attention really needs to be on "CI". The body is very efficient; exercising doesn't burn much. It's more for the purpose of maintaining some muscle mass as you drop weight. But junk food companies like to skew perception ("balance what you drink and do") to make it seem like a Big Gulp would be ok if only you ran more. Yeah, they're happy to shame and mislead overweight people, so long as they keep buying.

        • HumanOstrich3 days ago
          Your body doesn't absorb all the calories you consume, nor does it expend or store as energy all the calories you absorb. Biology is complicated and CICO is a flawed and condescending oversimplification. It's like telling people "well, you know, if you eat more than you need to, you'll gain weight". Duh, not helpful.
          • naming_the_user3 days ago
            If you have a diet, say each week you eat X grams of meat, Y of vegetables, Z of cereals, and then next week (or for a number of weeks) you eat {X,Y,Z}1.1 or {X,Y,Z}0.9, that will have a net effect all else being equal.

            There is nothing condescending about that. No-one is really claiming that all calories are equal e.g. you can replace 500 kcals of chicken with 450 kcals of olive oil and that be some sort of blockbuster great idea.

            CICO does have an implicit "your diet isn't completely batshit insane" attached to it.

          • s1artibartfast3 days ago
            >It's like telling people "well, you know, if you eat more than you need to, you'll gain weight". Duh, not helpful.

            It is a foundation to work from. Far better than believing that you can cheat thermodynamics, which is generally the alternative.

            There are some fringe cases and nuances, but I have never heard of one that was relevant. Do you have a use case where deviations would matter?

            Absorbed calories don't match label calories, but weight loss and gain are studied in terms of label calories, so it is irrelevant unless you are doing chemistry or particle physics.

            Labels could be in terms of arbitrary moon units instead of calories and it would still be true. Weight loss is a function of moon units in and moon units out.

      • blacksmith_tb3 days ago
        I don't think "drink gas" is a reasonable rebuttal, better to actually provide some kind of a reference[1].

        1: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/to-lose-weight-focus...

  • readthenotes13 days ago
    If I had to choose between sugar and meat that's been Maillarded, the properly cooked meats win by a landslide.

    Stop the war on Maillard. Start the war on sugar.

  • alliao3 days ago
    better show the graphics to my kids, it's very well done
  • spookybones3 days ago
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    • lizardking2 days ago
      I got that at first, but it worked on the second click.