Avoid grilled food as far as possible. Too much of grilled stuff, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, is not good for your heart.

Using a longevity calculator I was surprised to see the question: how many times a week do you eat char-grilled meat? But I quickly realised the relevance.

We generally want to be sure that food is cooked enough to destroy any harmful bacteria. However meats, poultry, and fish that are char-grilled, especially when fat drips and causes flame flairs, have compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) which are known carcinogens in laboratory animals, and have been implicated in human cancers.

Avoid grilled food as far as possible. Too much of grilled stuff, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, is not good for your heart.

But another answer might be to turn to a heart-healthy vegetarian diet, right? Not so fast. It is known that with the ageing process Advanced Glycation end products (AGEs) increase over time and are formed by chemical reactions inside the cells that trigger crosslinks between proteins to make them dysfunctional. They are particularly increased by high blood sugar and oxidative stress, such as in diabetes, and in chronic diseases associated with inflammation. Increasingly, cardiovascular disease, worsened by diabetes, is also seen to be an inflammation of the blood vessel walls.

Now there is evidence that AGEs can be created by cooking food, and that these are absorbed and enter the blood stream where they bind to receptors on cells lining the blood vessels. In this way AGEs in our diet could actually be a cause of the ‘diseases of ageing’ such as atherosclerosis, diabetes and chronic kidney disease. For instance, in diabetics, a meal rich in AGEs can cause one of the earliest signs of heart disease, dysfunction of the lining of blood vessels, within 90 minutes. Even in healthy, normal people, the AGE content in the diet correlates to blood levels of AGEs, and also to blood levels of the inflammatory marker C-Reactive Protein (CRP) that has been shown in many studies to be a powerful marker of the risk of future heart attacks.

The highest AGEs are found in foods with fats and proteins in addition to sugars. Thus meats and fish are again big sources. But so are roasted nuts and broiled tofu. And starchy vegetables cooked in fats at high heat may also be a significant source. Should we switch to raw food exclusively, as some advocate? Probably not. After all, humans have been using fire for hundreds of thousands of years.

Some experts believe we needed to cook our foods to increase absorption of all the calories that our large brains required as we evolved. So there is no simple answer to this. What are my recommendations? Since few of us Indians eat enough vegetables, especially leafy ones, I’d say take these in the raw form whenever possible to minimise heart risk. When snacking, choose raw foods. Most important: eat a salad every day. And whether vegetarian or non-veg, avoid the grill except as a rare treat or on ceremonial occasions.