#357 Glycine and Autophagy/mTOR, Steam vs Infrared vs Regular Sauna - Siim Land Q&A

Siim Land (0:00)

Hey, welcome back to the channel. My name is Siim Land, and today we're doing another Instagram Q&A. If you want to ask me a question, then make sure you follow me on Instagram at Siimland. Do it! So the first question is, can cooking in multi-cooker, electro grill, steam cooker, etc. make food unhealthy? So, you know, I have made some videos about the concept of advanced glycation in products and over frying your food. It generally does produce, let's say these unhealthy compounds into the food, especially if you're using a lot of oil and even like carbohydrates, they can develop or produce or, you know, create these compounds like acrylamide as well that is usually created at high temperature, cooking, roasting, etc. So, you know, fries, deep fried chicken, bacon, and even like coffee beans can have like this acrylamide. And obviously if it's like fat or protein, then it's gonna have these advanced glycation in products or advanced lipid end products. So yeah, pretty much all food oxidizes or develops this glycation to a certain extent, which in large quantities apparently is harmful to your health. And it may be increasing the risk of diabetes. It certainly like accelerates skin aging, advanced glycation end products, because the AGEs, they damage your collagen much more. It's like the number one thing that damages your collagen tissue, which is the advanced glycation end products. And thus, you know, speed up the development of wrinkles and things like that. Should you be worried about that?

You know, of course, it's good to be aware of that and not necessarily, you know, you don't want to be just eating only over fried food. You don't want to be necessarily or unnecessarily cook your food at very high temperatures and definitely don't deep fry your food. I mean, there's no like health benefits to deep frying your food. When it comes to like frying on a pan, then, you know, yeah, try to keep the temperatures moderate. Don't char your meat because the charred meat, these dark spots and grilling barbecue, they create these heterocyclic amines, which are carcinogenic as well. So definitely, you know, you I don't think that there is no like health or there's no, you know, rationale or there's no like way to explain yourself out of it. So many people say that, you know, these heterocyclic amines, the dark charred meat isn't a problem, but they also eat a lot of meat. So it's kind of a bias towards them. And at the same time, people who eat a lot of, let's say, potatoes, they, you know, fries and over fried potatoes, then they create a lot of acrylamide. So it's on all the foods and generally create these unhealthy compounds.

Again, like in moderation, it's fine.

It's not going to be a problem. Your body has antioxidant defense system. Your body has glutathione. Your body has ways to counteract AGEs, acrylamide and the heterogenic amines.

It's just that if it's like your defense system to become overwhelmed, then, yeah, it will, you know, start to cause issues at that point. And the amount of, you know, acrylamide or AGEs and and these heterogenic amines is very small compared to the threshold at which they become dangerous. So if you fry your steak, it's not going to have like enough of these heterogenic amines to be problematic. And likewise, if you eat a meal that has, you know, french fries, it's not going to be enough to actually have any actual side effects on your health. It's just that if you do it, you know, three times a day with all your meals, then over the course of years and decades, then you probably will experience some faster aging and some, you know, faster development of these hallmarks of aging and age related diseases. So, you know, moderation is key. Don't like panic over it. It's fine to eat fried food every once in a while.

Maybe like, you know, it's fine to cook them even like once a day in high temperatures, but don't necessarily do it for every meal. And if you can like minimize the high temperature cooking, then do it. Like if you can steam your food, like boiling is generally safer. Boiling doesn't create these compounds. Yeah, like boiled potatoes aren't going to have acrylamide, and boiled meat or boiled chicken isn't going to have the heterocyclic amines either. And it's not going to have advanced location net products either.

So, yeah, I mean, boiled meat is not the tastiest. The reason why people like this fried food and crispiness is because it's tastier. But it's certainly not as healthy as something that is steamed or boiled. And yeah, if you can choose, then yeah, it's kind of better to kind of boil it and steam it or just cook at like a lower temperature. Slow cooked meat is great. Like you put it into this crackpot or crockpot. Sorry, you put it into the pot and in the oven for many hours. That's generally pretty safe and healthy. There are also some supplements that you can take to counteract these, you know, harmful compounds. So when it comes to AGEs, then just make sure that you reduce the glycemic load of the meal, which means that you include things like protein fiber that lower the glycemic response of the meal.