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Join today<\/a><\/p>\n \n Already a member? What you eat is incredibly important for your health<\/a>. But how you prepare will have a significant impact too. <\/p>\n Neuroscientist Dr Cox is the author of The Age Code: The New Science of Food and How It Can Save Us<\/a>. Researching for the book, he was determined to uncover all the various ways smart food choices<\/a> give us more healthy years on this planet. And he found boiling or steaming meat, rather than frying or grilling it, could hold untold longevity<\/a> benefits. <\/p>\n \u201cI looked into different cooking methods<\/a>, and what I found was really interesting,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the Western diet<\/a>, we love nothing more than frying and barbecuing red meat<\/a> or fish, and that\u2019s completely fine in moderation. But if you\u2019re doing it on a regular basis, you\u2019re generating certain toxins in your food.\u201d<\/p>\n Applying a dry heat to something like a steak causes sugars and proteins within it to react, accelerating the formation of toxins called AGEs, or advanced glycation end products, Dr Cox says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe interesting thing with these toxins is that placing a greater AGE<\/a> load on your body every day or week accelerates the ageing process in different ways,\u201d he continues. \u201cAGE activates a receptor in our body which is involved in driving inflammation<\/a> and oxidative stress. You\u2019re accelerating a lot of the underlying biology of ageing.\u201d <\/p>\n To remedy this, Dr Cox recommends two solutions. The first is water-based cooking. <\/p>\n \u201cFind more ways to include moisture in your cooking \u2013 for example, steaming, stewing or slow cooking,\u201d he says. \u201cAll of these things are considered low AGE methods of cooking because, as soon as you add water, you inhibit the chemical reaction which leads to the creation of AGEs. <\/p>\n \u201cThere has been a lot of research on this topic. If you look at many Asian countries such as Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan, where people use these traditional ways of cooking, their rates of certain chronic diseases are a lot lower, and many people think this is down to their cooking.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at their national dishes: pho in Vietnam, or ramen<\/a> in Japan. They cook meat with a lot of moisture, and that stops AGE from forming, which could mitigate different aspects of the ageing process that would otherwise lead to disease.\u201d <\/p>\n Read more: That diet your friend swears by isn\u2019t magic \u2013 this is why it works<\/a><\/p>\n Dr Cox\u2019s second dietary prescription for better health<\/a> involves rebalancing your ratio of animal-based and plant-based foods. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the super agers, or the small proportion of people who make it to 70 with their cognition and physical health intact, and no chronic diseases, what they all do is eat more fruits and vegetables than you would expect,\u201d he says. \u201cMost follow a pattern where they eat twice as many fruits and vegetables as they do protein<\/a>, whereas most of us do the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n This does not mean protein is unimportant<\/a>, but it is just one piece of the dietary puzzle for better health. <\/p>\n \u201c…As we get older, the source of our protein matters as well,\u201d Dr Cox adds. \u201cMost of us get most of our protein from animal proteins \u2013 we probably eat too much of it. But when you really look at the ageing research, we should probably be eating animal and plant proteins in roughly a one-to-one ratio.\u201d<\/p>\n This, he says, is because processed meats contain numerous additives which can drive and accelerate various ageing processes. Plant-based whole foods, on the other hand, tend to come loaded with vitamins<\/a>, minerals<\/a> and other nutrients that help the body operate at its best. <\/p>\n
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Adapting your diet to include more fruits, vegetables and plant-based foods could lower your risk of chronic diseases (Getty\/iStock)<\/p>\n