Anyone look into Helen Vlassara MD research on advanced glycation end products or AGEs?
What I have read about AGER1 is that you can increase it with a Mediterranean diet, and curcumin (Adding CoQ after food even better). Does anyone know of any other means of enhancing it’s expression?
Higher Dietary Intake of Advanced Glycation End Products Is Associated with Faster Cognitive Decline in Community-Dwelling Older Adults
AGEs content of food consumed by older adults varies with the food type and methods employed for its preparation. Thus, the level of AGEs in daily food consumption may contribute to the level and rate of cognitive decline in older adults. AGEs are formed endogenously in the course of normal cellular metabolism and their levels tend to increase with age [5]. Exogenous sources such as pre-formed AGEs from food may also contribute significantly to the body’s pool of AGEs [6,7]. AGEs exist in most foods, but they are particularly abundant in animal-derived foods, such as meat, poultry, and fish, which are also rich in fats. Content of AGEs in these foods increases significantly when cooking at high temperatures using a dry cooking technique (e.g., grilling, broiling, roasting, searing), but less when using lower temperatures and a cooking technique with more moisture (e.g., boiling, poaching). The content of AGEs is much lower in plant-derived foods [4,8,9]. Therefore, modifying the type of food consumed and the techniques employed for its preparation can affect levels of exogenous dietary AGEs. There are few studies examining the association of dietary advanced glycation end products (dAGEs) consumption with cognitive decline.
Methods: Non-demented older adults (n = 684) underwent annual testing with 19 cognitive tests summarized as a global cognitive score based on five cognitive domains. We modified a previously validated food frequency questionnaire designed to assess dAGE. The modified questionnaire assessed portion size and frequency of consumption of six food groups (meat, poultry, fish, cheese, spreads, and processed foods), as well as the method of their preparation (e.g., grilling, boiling). dAGE was the sum of the scores of the six food groups. Linear mixed-effect models were used to examine the association of baseline dAGE with cognitive decline. All models controlled for age, sex, education, race, and body mass index (BMI).
Open access paper:
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Yes, I’ve been somewhat minimizing AGEs in my diet for probably two decades, largely thanks to her research. The main action to take is to reduce intake of foods cooked at high temperatures.
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I understood wet high temp (boiling in water) is okay; it’s the dry high temp that creates the chemical change (browning). Also high temp oil (fried foods) is problematic because of the change to the oil rather than the food. Is that right?
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Yes. Boiling will create some AGEs but a lot less than frying or other types of dry heating. The lower the temperature and the greater the moisture the lower the AGE formation. Also it’s better to cook something slowly at lower temperatures than fast at higher temperatures. The main things to worry about with respecct to AGE formation from cooking are fats and proteins. They are the macronutrients that form most AGEs. Carbs don’t form much at all from getting cooked.
It’s both. It creates toxic chemicals from the oil, but also creates more AGEs in the food you’re cooking with the oil.
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So, we should all be eating only Sous Vid cooking now ? 
Of course you have to worry about the plastics in the bags then I suspect. But at low temps less of an issue.
Yes that would be a good way to cook.
How about microwaving?
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I think it’s not as good as boiling but a lot better than frying even if you fry at low temperatures.
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New open access paper:
Cooking methods affect advanced glycation end products and lipid profiles: A randomized cross-over study in healthy subjects
Highlights
• Cooking methods alter food’s biological impact, even with identical ingredients
• Boiling and steaming improve lipid profiles and increase serum protein 4E-BP1
• Grilling and baking increase advanced glycation end products and fecal butyrate
• Culinary techniques should be considered in cardiometabolic preventive strategies
Summary
Thermal treatments used in ultra-processed foods (UPFs) lead to advanced glycation end products (AGEs). UPFs and serum AGEs are associated with cardiometabolic disease. We explore differential cooking methods as a mechanistic link between UPFs and detrimental health outcomes through a randomized cross-over cooking method trial in healthy subjects using identical ingredients and a deep profiling analysis. We show that low-AGE-generating cooking methods such as boiling and steaming decrease serum AGEs, improve lipid profiles, and increase serum protein 4E-BP1. In contrast, high-AGE-generating cooking methods such as grilling and baking increase fecal butyrate. In sum, this suggests that low-AGE-generating cooking methods should be considered in cardiovascular risk prevention. Since current dietary guidelines focus on ingredients, but not cooking methods, our results suggest that culinary techniques should be considered as an important factor in cardiometabolic preventive strategies and future dietary trial design. This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT06547190).
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(25)00164-8
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Water-based cooking: It can improve hydration, reduce microplastics, and of course reducing dietary AGEs whatever they do.
Water-based cooking may be key to aging well—and Dr. Michelle Davenport explains why. She joins WHOOP’s Kristen Holmes to explore how cooking methods impact long-term health, and why reducing compounds called AGEs can support longevity. You’ll learn how broth-based meals, steaming, and poaching can promote metabolic health, and why reconnecting with traditional food culture might matter more than any diet trend.
00:00 Introduction and Warm Welcome
00:20 Family Influence and Water-Based Cooking Origins
02:33 Health Benefits of Water-Based Cooking
06:35 Practical Tips for Water-Based Cooking
16:13 Challenges and Adaptations in Modern Diets
25:17 Convenience of Vegetables
26:05 Longevity and Diet
26:41 Resistant Starch Benefits
29:42 Water-Based Cooking Revelation
32:37 Impact of AGEs on Health
40:05 Practical Tips for Reducing AGEs
43:22 Importance of Water Quality
45:35 Sample Healthy Meals
47:39 Final Thoughts on Healthy Living
Like the ultimate human food
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You’ve posted elsewhere that dietary AGE isn’t important for aging or related to tissue AGE, so to be clear, dietary AGE has no relationship with the negative effects of AGE found in the body (with correlations)? Or why do you reduce dietary AGE’s?
They are a bio-marker implicated in aging and the development, or worsening, of many degenerative diseases, such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, chronic kidney disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.
This is only tissue AGE and not serum AGE/dietary AGE?
Since learning about AGEs I’ve been doing more pressure cooking and boiling instead of frying and baking.
I’m looking forward to future treatments that can undo the damage of AGEs.
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That’s true, the dietary AGEs don’t have any direct relationship with the AGEs formed inside the body. Why then reduce consumption of dietary AGEs? Because a portion of them are absorbed from the digestive tract and reach the blood. Once in the blood they bind to the receptor for AGEs which results in inflammatory reactions in the body. So reducing your AGE consumption can help lower inflammation in the body.
This is mostly tissue AGEs but to a smaller extent serum AGEs. Serum AGEs can be formed inside the body and as such are a proxy for the amount of AGEs formed in the body. However serum AGEs are alco partially derived from the diet and that portion reflects ingested intake not what’s being formed endogenously in the body.
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This is one of the areas where I am not willing to put any effort into this, lol. Barbecue, seared, baked, and fried foods are one of life’s great pleasures. Eating boiled and steamed food is usually just sad.
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So dietary AGE consumption endpoint is inflammation, could you say that the endpoint is hsCRP and that maybe people would see it move by adjusting dietary AGE? If someone had undetectable hsCRP they don’t have to worry?
I bet the AGE studies use serum levels (but which then would be a proxy for tissue levels), and people can get confused and believe decreasing serum levels by reducing exogenous levels is the target because it would have similar effects.
Thanks, it’s interesting
Inflammation isn’t the only endpoint of AGE consumption but it appears to be the main one. I wouldn’t necessarily say if you have undetectable hsCRP you don’t have to worry, athough yes, that would definitely be a good sign in this respect.
Yes, most of the studies on AGEs use serum levels, which don’t really reflect tissue levels. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have good methods to measure tissue levels accurately. The AGE reader device that uses light to examine the skin works ok as a mesaure of AGEs in the skin, but that device is not widely available and you won’t detect slow accumulation of AGEs from one month to the next with that device. I wish we had better ways to measure AGE accumulation in vivo to be able to test interventions more.
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FWIW
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