Diabetes News And Latest Update: Methods Of Cooking May Contribute To The Risk Of Developing Type 2 Diabetes

Boiling steaming, poaching, steaming, grilling, baking are some of the ways of cooking a meal. Experts warned that people should be careful in choosing how they cook their meal because it may contribute to their risk of developing type-2 diabetes.

According to tucson.com, the researchers suggest that the safest way to cook food is by boiling, steaming and poaching. They said that when you fry, grill and bake food, often times called dry-heating cooking, these foods produces substances known as advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Study authors found out that higher levels of AGEs are connected to insulin resistance, giving stress to the body's cells and inflammation. These factors usually contribute to the risk of developing diabetes.

As many may have already known, insulin is a hormone in the body that turns blood sugar in the body into energy. Without this hormone or if the body becomes resistant to insulin, there will be too much sugar in the blood that can lead to serious problems for different organs including the heart, eyes, and kidneys.

"When you look at people with chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes or dementia put on a high-AGE diet or a low one, those on the low-AGE diet show signs of decreasing inflammation," said the study's lead author, Dr. Jaime Uribarri. He's a professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Immortalnews.org reported that Uribarri and a team of researchers conducted an experiment with 100 participants who were randomly assigned to 2 diet groups. The first group had 49 participants and consumed a regular amount of AGE, while the other group, with 51 participants consumed foods that had low AGE.

All the participants were at least 50 years old, and had at least one of the following medical conditions: high blood pressure, large waistline, high levels of fasting blood sugar, high levels of bad cholesterol and high levels of triglycerides.

Newsmax.com reported that the low-AGE group was given instructions on how to lower the AGE content in their foods. They were told to avoid frying, baking or grilling foods. Instead, they were encouraged to boil, steam, and stew or poach their meals, to simply put, cook with water, while the participants in the regular AGE group were told to keep eating and cooking the way they normally did.

Researchers found that those in the AGE group had developed an increased resistance in insulin as well as better inflammation and stress parameters. Also, their body weight dropped and there were no side effects noticed. Although the study suggest that there may be a direct relationship between the method of cooking and the risk of developing type-2 diabetes, researchers admit that there is a need for further testing on a large scale to confirm the results.

Meanwhile, one specialist thinks just switching cooking techniques isn't enough to curb diabetes risk. "We know that we have AGEs that are increased by cooking, but many foods themselves are also high in AGEs. So, in addition to changing how we cook, we also want to change what we're eating," said Samantha Heller, a senior clinical nutritionist at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City.

"I think it's more important to focus on the quality of your food choices. Vegetables and other plant foods aren't as high in AGEs," she noted.