From cooking at too high temperatures to consuming too little fat, what and how we eat can have a big impact on the way we age. Here’s what you might be doing wrong – and how to fix it
One of the challenges with the sheer availability of food in today’s world is that lots of us end up spending many of our waking hours eating. Whether it’s full meals, snacks or desserts, scientists have found that it’s not uncommon for us to be mindlessly grazing at some point during all of our 16 or so waking hours.
The problem? As soon as this food hits the bloodstream in the form of glucose, it initiates the release of the hormone insulin. This in turn activates a switch present in every one of our cells, which is responsible for driving cell growth and proliferation.
We need this mechanism to survive, but too much cell proliferation can be a bad thing. It leads to more random mutations in your DNA and, over time, a greater likelihood of cancer, as well as fuelling the growth of a damaging form of internal fat known as visceral fat.
As Eric Verdin, president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, points out, our bodies need time away from eating to have a chance to focus on repair. He says: “There is a lot of evidence for this – 12 hours fasting and repairing, and 12 hours eating and building is more conducive to healthy ageing.”
