Longevity willpower – understanding how AGEs affect cravings could help us age more healthily

Buck Institute researchers identify a mechanism that may explain why eating tasty but unhealthy foods makes us hungry for more.

Moderate obesity can reduce life expectancy by about 3 years, and severe obesity can knock a whole decade off your life – a reduction equal to that caused by being a lifelong smoker. Obesity increases the chances of disability and mortality and leads to spiralling healthcare costs and lower productivity; overweight and obesity are the fifth leading risk for global deaths, with the burdens associated with diabetes, ischaemic heart disease and certain cancers causing the deaths of 2.8 million people each year.

My take on this: And yet, despite clear evidence that being overweight can impact on healthspan and lifespan, people still overeat and pack their diet with snacks and fatty junk foods. Why are these foods so hard to resist? Well, not only are they easy to come by, they are often cheap, quick to prepare and widely advertised... and, of course, they are often delicious. While this all adds up to a recipe for overindulgence, it's one that has a detrimental effect on our longevity.

Now researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have determined for the first time just why certain chemicals in cooked or processed foods increase hunger, and test both our willpower and ability to make healthy choices when it comes to food.

The chemicals in question are advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. AGEs are metabolic by-products that occur when a sugar combines with part of a protein, lipid or nucleic acid. They occur naturally when we metabolize sugars in a cell, but AGEs are also created during baking, frying and grilling, and are in many processed foods.

Feeling peckish? Muniesh Muthaiyan Shanmugam, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Kapahi laboratory at the Buck and the lead author of the study, explains why evolution is part of the answer.

“Humans evolved certain mechanisms that encourage us to eat as much food as possible during times of plenty. We store the excess calories as fat that we use to survive times of fasting. Natural selection favored genes that makes us preferentially consume flavorful food, especially those with higher sugar content.”

Explore the Buck study on AGEs, further diving into aspects such as their creation, buildup and related insights from Drs Kapahi and Shanmugam HERE.

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