The Dangers Of High Heat Cooking

Cooking foods at high temperatures can result in the production of numerous volatile carcinogens. Additionally, cooking foods at high temperatures can significantly denature the food that is about to enter your body, reducing its nutritive value. Several nutrients are extremely heat labile and this includes several amino acids and essential vitamins.

Barbeque & Frying

The age-old tradition of grilling is a very unhealthy way to consume your food. Grilling meats at high temperatures causes the formation of numerous, powerful, mutagenic (producing changes in DNA) and carcinogenic end products, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic amines. These end products are highly toxic and are cancer causing.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons form when fat drips onto charcoal, which induces smoke, which adheres to the cooked meat. Heterocyclic amines (HAC’s) form when creatine reacts with amino acids. There has been identified 17 HAC’s that are known to increase cancer risk.

Research has identified that carcinogenic HAC’s from high-heat cooked meats may significantly increase the risk of numerous cancers including stomach, pancreatic, colorectal and breast.

AGE’s

Marinades that include sugars of any type (such as in pasteurization of dairy), and cooking starch, at high heat may react during high heat cooking forming Advanced Glycation End Products (AGE’s).

AGE’s are compounds with potential carcinogenic effects in the body. They are one of several hundred volatile substances produced when food is heated at high temperatures. It is believed AGE’s can also be produced from hyperglycemia, when there are elevated levels of glucose in the serum.

AGE’s induce tissue damage through a process referred to as “cross linking”. In the body, AGE formation is consistent when there are elevated levels of fructose in the diet. Next time you reach for a can of soda, consider the HFCS’s (high fructose corn syrup) effect upon your body, and the resultant free radical activity and tissue destruction it may induce.

Cook Your Food At Low Temperatures

Cooking your food at very low temperatures has a number of benefits. First, low temperature cooking which involves low oven heat, searing food or crock pot cooking will contain extremely low or zero carcinogenic end products. Second, you will preserve more of the nutritional value of your food. This includes preservation of many heat labile amino acids such as methionine, taurine and cysteine.

Vitamins such as C and phytonutrients are also heat labile and will be destroyed during cooking.