Posted on 11/12/2002 7:43:20 AM PST by ex-Texan
Slow Cooking May Be Far Better Than High Heat
By Maggie Fox
Health and Science Correspondent
11-12-2
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It may not be what you eat, but how you cook it, that affects whether food causes heart disease, diabetes and other conditions, researchers in the United States reported on Monday.
A new study shows that cooking at high temperatures -- frying, grilling and even microwaving -- creates compounds that are associated with disease when they are found in the body.
Foods cooked by low-temperature methods such as boiling and steaming do not contain as many of these compounds, the team at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found.
While the findings do not discount the benefits of a healthy diet low in fat and sugar, they may help explain why some people who stick to such a diet continue to suffer from heart disease and diabetes, Dr. Helen Vlassara, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
The culprits are called advanced glycation end products or AGEs for short. They are made by the interactions of sugars, fats, and proteins and form quickly when food is cooked at high temperatures.
"These are substances that are forming spontaneously in our body from glucose reactions," Vlassara said. "The higher the glucose is, the higher the products will be. Diabetics have a lot more, and they are highly toxic."
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vlassara and colleagues said AGEs can irritate cells, causing them to produce proteins that trigger inflammation, such as C-reactive protein.
"We tend always to cook our food under high heat. And because most foods consist of proteins, lipids and sugars, when we heat them under high heat for a long time, those reactions are accelerated. We end up absorbing those," she said.
TASTY AND BROWN, BUT NOT HEALTHY?
This kind of cooking produces tasty foods, Vlassara said. "They make the food taste good, or make it look good -- by browning it," she said.
Animal products rich in fat are the worst culprits, she said.
Her team studied 24 diabetes patients, giving them identical diets that differed only in how the food was prepared.
"The diets that we tested and gave to patients in this report are those that are recommended for diabetics," Vlassara, a specialist in diabetes, said.
But where one group got grilled tuna, another got poached tuna, for example. The poached tuna would presumably be lower in AGEs as it was cooked at lower temperatures.
There were clear differences in the blood of the patients, although it was too soon to tell whether there were health benefits, Vlassara said.
Those eating the high AGE diet had more AGEs in their blood, and also had higher levels of inflammatory chemicals such as tumor necrosis factor and C-reactive protein.
These inflammatory chemicals are linked with the progression of heart disease and the damage caused by diabetes -- such as blindness, nerve damage, and damage to organs such as the kidney.
In other studies on animals, Vlassara said a low-AGE diet helped prevent the development of type-I diabetes, caused when the body mistakenly attacks and destroys the pancreatic cells that make insulin.
Vlassara said she did not believe her findings related to the discovery this year that some fried and baked foods contain high levels of chemicals called acrylamides, which can cause cancer in animals.
Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited.
Yes, but.......
..... which is covered in MORE tin-foil?????????????
;-)
I remember my dad using canned tomatoes on his Shredded Wheat when I had finished off all the milk. This was back in the 40s.
Another method I like is coating the fillets with a thin layer of prepared Dijon mustard before cooking. Both versions are great with a nice rice pilaf (prepared in the microwave while the salmon's grilling), crisp green salad and crackling cold chardonnay.
Which is probably one of the annoying little things that sparks some of those California-bashing threads - green-eyed jealousy. I live in upstate NY, and I get to really grill for maybe seven months of the year ;)
More seriously, a good garlic butter can't be beat on salmon, but I much prefer fresh garlic to the liquid stuff. Take a clove or two and slice as thinly as you can manage - I use a single-edge razor blade, actually ;) - and sauté for a minute or two in a small skillet with a little butter. The garlic just melts away if you cut it thin enough...
Well, I guess it would depend on whether I was listening to Art Bell or not...
And I cry, "Fowl", dear Sir! (Hehe) Culinary sexism! ;-)
Have to adjust cooking times, though.
OK, once it did not work. So cold out the fire would not stay lit (yes, you can put out a fire with cold - just remove heat faster than it is produced). My wife was PO'd - said something about not wanting to heat up the house.
You really think a man invented bundt cake? Or springform pans? Or the double-boiler? Or those $300 food processors that do everything but wax the floor?
I think not. Please, cooking with fire is a minimalist affair, and so must be a manly exercise. No self-respecting man should need anything more than some open flames, a pointy implement for poking and turning, and a sharp thing for cutting. Anything more, and you risk losing the chance for men to get in touch with their Neaderthal roots.
Now, this is not to say that woman cannot grill, and grill well, just as there are men who can do a killer vichysoisse, I am sure. But some things tend to fall on one side of the fence, and some things tend to fall on the other, if you follow me ;)
Regards,
TS
I agree with you...but of the men I have known and cherished (admittedly a small sample), not a one of them could grill or cook over an open fire.
Thankfully, as part of my father's ritualistic camping expeditions, such back-to-nature cooking was encouraged. Heck, I even know how to bank a fire and make backwoods coffee (with egg shells). Yes, and I know how to clean and gut fish too.
"Wimps"? The gas knob? If the good Lord intended Man to grill with propane, He wouldn't have invented wood. Get yourself a nice Weber and get back in touch with real flame, the way God intended it ;)
Actually, I can't scoff too much at your preference for gas (feh! spit!). A friend of mine ran a gas line out to his back yard a few years ago, and built a great big brick fire pit, complete with spit, suitable for roasting an entire ox if he so desires. It's really kind of impressive when he fires it up ;)
Sigh. Another symptom of our Oprahfied society ;)
Heck, I even know how to bank a fire and make backwoods coffee (with egg shells). Yes, and I know how to clean and gut fish too.
Excellent! That would about cover the gamut of skills necessary for camping, between the two of us - you know all that woodcraft stuff, and I am an expert at draining and disposing of prepackaged fermented beverages ;)
I think the guy next door converted an old VW Beetle into a BBQ grill. Sucker is HUGE!
He cooks things at a low temperature and for a L-O-O-O-O-N-G time. I distinctly remember eating our smoked chicken dinner at 11:00 p.m. one Saturday night last summer.
That said...you can't beat smoked chicken or pork loin. He usually cooks with a gas grill; this give him the "me cook with fire" thing you guys seem to need.
After winter gives way to mosquito season ;)
Hey, some things are worth waiting for, right? ;)
That said...you can't beat smoked chicken or pork loin. He usually cooks with a gas grill; this give him the "me cook with fire" thing you guys seem to need.
We ran a whole turkey through the smoker last June. Don't mind the caveman grunts, though - it's all part of the cooking-with-fire experience. 50,000 years ago, your husband and his friends would have been dragging home a whole mammoth to grill - such is progress ;)
LOL...reminds me of the Thanksgiving turkey we ate very late one year. Dad decided to smoke it, and of course it took way longer than he had planned. But it was delicious.
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