WHOOP Podcast - How to Fuel Longevity: The Missing Link Between Food, Aging, and Metabolic Health with Dr. Michelle Davenport

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

What is water-based cooking and how can it aid your longevity? On this week’s episode of the WHOOP Podcast, WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance Principal Scientist, Dr. Kristen Holmes, sits down with Nutrition Scientist and Registered Dietician, Dr. Michelle Davenport. Dr. Michelle Davenport specializes in improving metabolic health through her science-proven water-based cooking method. Her research studies the impact of Advance Glycation End Products, or AGEs, which are molecules formed when sugars non-enzymatically bind to proteins or lipids. Dr. Holmes and Dr. Davenport dive into the impact of AGEs on aging, chronic illness, neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases, and how water-based cooking might just be the key to slowing these effects.(00:35) Dr. Michelle Davenport’s Water-Based Cooking(03:05) Metabolic Health And Food Culture in The United States(05:39) What is Water-Based Cooking?(06:49) Using Water-based Cooking As A Dietary Strategy(10:06) Dr. Davenport’s Favorite Marinade To Try This Summer(10:47) What are AGEs and How Do They Accelerate Aging?(14:09) Benefits of Antioxidants and Anti-inflammatory Foods(16:33) Why Are Life Expectancies Decreasing In America? Reason #1 Processed Food(19:24) Reason #2: Lacking Culture Around Food in The US(21:38) Reason #3: We Need To Understand The Basics(29:25) Michelle’s Wake Up Call with Nutrition(33:04) What Are The Biomarkers For Damage Caused By AGEs?(35:08) AGEs: The Effects On Neurodegenerative Disease(38:58) What Can You Start Doing Today To Reduce AGEs?(42:12) Water-Quality in Water-Based Cooking(44:20) Dr. Davenport’s Go To MealsFollow Dr. Michelle Davenport:WebsiteInstagramLinkedInSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

There's a lot of research to support that water-based cooking is one of the best ways to cook if you're wanting to promote healthy aging. It lowers something called advanced glycation end products, aging compounds that age us from the inside out, and they form mostly in dry, high heat. Across the board, cooking with water inhibits the formation of these compounds. The thing that I love about this research is that I feel like it empowers everyone. I hope that you have access to clean water, and if you do, that's pretty much all you need in order to cook this way. Dr. Davenport, welcome. Hello. So happy to be here.

Oh, so excited for this conversation. I have to say that when I found out I was interviewing you, of course, I went on your Instagram to check out your page. And I was like, why am I not steaming my food for every meal? So I cannot wait to dig into it. But it's so inspirational. It's so beautiful. And I wanted to start, like you reference your mom and your grandma.

so much. I'd love to know how they've influenced your journey and you have this epic, you know, career, academic history and nutrition science. I'd love to know kind of how that all came together for you. So I get this question a lot. Like, how did you arrive at water-based cooking, like what inspired you? And to be honest, it's hard to pinpoint a time period in my life because, I mean, it's been my entire life. You know, I grew up in a family where water-based cooking and broth was life. Like every meal centered around a broth. And just yesterday, we were celebrating Lunar New Year at my mom's side of the family, and there were so many water-cooked dishes and broths, and we had multiple noodle soups. And it's just one of those things

in Vietnamese culture and Vietnamese-American, where everything centers around a broth. Like when you give birth, there's a special broth for that. If you're celebrating a wedding, there's a special broth for that. Like, there's a different broth for every celebration and every occasion. You know, if you're sick, there's a broth for that. So I feel like it was just like so ingrained in my life. have two grandmothers actually. One of them is 96. She's getting a little bit older now. And I think the decline probably happened after she lost her husband. My grandfather passed away a few years ago. But for the longest time, she's been, and even now, she's very metabolically healthy. She is starting to get to be a little bit more forgetful. But her entire life has been centered around water-based

cooking and cooking everything from scratch. She's very rarely eaten out. I always cite that she's probably gone to a restaurant five or six times in her life. And those times have been for like a wedding or something you know growing up it was such a pain because we'd want to take her out for dinner and she'd be like no we're going to make food at home let's make this soup you know so it's always been like that my other grandmother is very much like that also so yeah it's it's been it's been my life for so long and so when I got to you know doing it professionally and for my research getting my PhD it was like everything clicked at that point I was like of course it's water you know it's broth that's like what I've been thinking about for forever

When we think about longevity and aging, you mentioned your grandma is 98 years old. She's metabolically super healthy. We think about the metabolic crisis in the U.S., right? That is a huge problem. And I'm sure there's a connection between how we are cooking our foods. I think when you cook your food, when you're doing water-based cooking, for example, and we need an explanation of exactly what that is, that kind of constrains what you can eat to a degree, right? There's just things that you would not put into water, for example, in cook it. So it kind of constraints, like what you end up cooking. And in that constraint, you potentially end up cooking healthier things. That was kind of my assumption. I'd love to know just what is this actual connection between water-based cooking and longevity. And if you can start by just describing what is water-based cooking. Well, we'll have to dive into a lot of like the molecular pathways and things as to why water-based cooking is so great. But just generally speaking, there's a lot of research to support that water-based cooking is one of the best ways to cook if you're wanting to promote healthy aging. It lowers something called advanced

glycation end products, and I'll talk more about that in detail later on. Those are basically aging compounds that age us from the inside out, and they form mostly in dry high heat. So think like roasting, grilling, broiling, which is very prevalent in Western cuisine, but it's not the best way to cook if we're thinking in terms of, you know, these aging compounds called AGEs. So water-based cooking, you know, when we look at the data from one of my mentors, Dr. Jaime Uri-Bari, he's from Mount Sinai. He's from a lab that is really, you know, kind of like at the forefront of this entire body of research. And he created a database of all the different foods, and he tested them for different amounts of AGEs in them. And like across the board, you know,

cooking with water inhibits the formation of these compounds. The best analogy I can give you is like, you know, when you go to a restaurant and a chef is trying to like describe to other chefs like how to make the perfect steak, right? It's not with water. Like he's going to want to get that sear so that he wants to get it really dry, high heat to get that perfect brown crust. But what that brown crust is is actually a big crust of AGEs. So the mechard. This is so sad. There's good news though. Okay. There's ways to mitigate that also. You can marinate with acids. That's another thing that you can do. Choosing different types of cuts of protein. They mostly form in animal products, so anything that's really high in fat and protein. But again, back to water-based cooking, it's such an easy way to, instead of focusing on all these horrible things that you're trying to lower and, like, thinking about all the compounds, I like to just focus on traditional ways of cooking.

like if you look at really, really old cuisines around the world, some of my favorite messages that I get from people are from random parts of the world. We have that same soup, you know, like we also have this kind of cabbage roll cooked in broth. And I love that because it's such a universal thing. And I love to think about the changes in cookware over the years, you know, ceramic and clay pots where are ubiquitous for a long time. And the nature of those pots kind of require you to cook. with slow moist heat.

Like, you can't really fry stuff in a clay pot or also it'll break. And a lot of cultures have clay pots and things. And so we all have these kind of like water-based recipes. And then, you know, stainless steel and metal cookware became more prevalent, like, later on. And I think now it's like pretty like ubiquitous also in Western cuisine and all global cuisines. But I think everyone's kind of rooted in this like ceramic clay slow cooking thing also, which I really like. So when I think about nutrition science and I,

think about all of the different dietary strategies. I feel like I haven't even heard of water be. I mean, I understand like water based cooking, but as just like a technique and a dietary strategy, maybe just talk about it from that lens. When we zoom out broadly and we think about, all right, I have to make a decision on how to cook my meal today. What would be your kind of thesis or argument behind a predominantly water based cooking? And I assume for all three meals. So breakfast, lunch, dinner. Is that what you do in your home? It's not so much that I am like, and people ask me this a lot, like, do you only eat water-based cooked foods? So, first of all, I'm married to a guy who loves barbecue. That makes it really hard. But there's ways to deal with that also.

I think, like, for me, it's a little bit easier because I think being someone who really loves Asian cuisine and especially Vietnamese food, so much of our food is already water-based that I don't really have to think that much about it. I tend to kind of think about the recipes that I like, and then I kind of like catalog them in my brain, and then I just kind of pick foods from that catalog of recipes. You know, I have a whole long list of water-based cooked foods that we love to eat, and we just cook those. And I don't really, it's not like I'm like, oh, I have to only eat water-based cooking. But it's something I think about definitely when we go out to eat, like at a restaurant. And it makes it much harder from eating at a place

where it's like, you know, everything is fried or like, you know, barbecue restaurant or something. American restaurants tend to be a little bit harder, but I'll zone in on low-agee foods. And so there are different strategies that you can kind of think about when you're not able to have water-based cooking or to cook your own foods. And something I like to rely on when I'm out is to eat plant-based if I can't, you know, control, like, how I'm cooking the meat because I'm not in the kitchen with them or whatever. or I try to look for, you know, like stews or sometimes I'll just yolo it and just be like, okay, whatever, I'm having a steak tonight. Like, I'm just going to enjoy it and live my life, right? I try not to take the joy out of eating.

I think that's a really big part of it. And I think when you start making things too constrained is when it gets to be difficult and not sustainable. Yeah, definitely. My household, we grill a lot. How do you, what is the work around there? You mentioned meridating with acid. So what is that technique?

involve and yeah how do we kind of mitigate some of the risks or lower the AG I suppose and some of these other techniques it's exactly that so on the studies show that if you marinate a protein about 10 to 15 minutes before cooking it with high dry heat you can depending on the cut of meat decrease the amount of AGs that form in that meat by almost 50 percent so it's a pretty significant drop I still think that overall water-based cooking is probably better as a form of you know like a more predominant cooking style. I tend to rely on that. But during the summer, you know, you're going to have opportunities to grill.

And especially, I don't know, in the U.S., we just really love to do that during the summer and this Fourth of July and all these things. Like, there are moments when you really can't get away from dry heat cooking. And as long as you're kind of like thinking about marination with acid and using those techniques, I think it's a good way to mitigate how much shows up in the food. What's your favorite marinating technique? Like, what's your favorite marinade? What would be the makeup of that?

I actually shared my favorite one on my Instagram last summer because I was like, everybody needs to do this one. It's so good. It's like a mix of balsamic vinegar, vinegar or lemon juice. And then I do Worcestershire and some soy sauce and a bunch of other stuff in it, like garlic and things and let that sit for a while, throw some herbs in there. It doesn't feel like a punishment to eat this. It's good food, you know.

It's what I try to tell people. It's like, you know, I'm talking about the benefits of water-based cooking and marinating with acid, but it's not like it tastes bad. It's like pretty great. Most people are marinating with acid anyways. Most of the time. Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. We do a lot of that. Yeah. How do AGs actually accelerate aging? So maybe I should talk about what AGs are first. AGs are short for advanced glycation end products. It's an umbrella term for the hundreds of compounds that are formed when a reducing sugar like glucose or fructose attached to an amino acid, protein, lipid, or nucleic acid. That's a lot of stuff. That's why they're

hundreds of compounds. It goes through a number of rearrangements, form something called a shift base, and then an amatory product, and finally becomes a stable thing called advanced glycation end product, or AGEs for short. And these things are kind of like molecular super glue. They are sticky. They make everything sticky and also insoluble. So what they will do is one of two things. They can attach to other proteins and amino acids in the body. They will literally glob onto something like collagen and just like stick to it. And over time, you know, having too many of these cross links, we see stiffening of tissue. So a good thing to think of is maybe like, you know, in wrinkled skin, there is a lot of stiffening of the collagen

due to advanced glycation end products. So a lot of cosmetic companies have been really invested in this space. The second thing that AGs can do is actually attached to a receptor called receptor for AGEs or rage. And that kicks off a whole host of inflammation an oxidative stress, and basically, like, it's chronic inflammation that occurs after the rage cascade is kicked off. I think for a long time, especially, like, before the 80s, we thought of aging as, like, separate things, like, you know, diabetes was its own silo and Alzheimer's was its own silo. And starting in the 1980s, researchers started to connect the dots and say, oh, actually, like, aging is kind of a combination of all of these things rooted in the same.

kind of like metabolic cause. In fact, they started to call Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes because there is that connection between insulin resistance and Alzheimer's. So a lot of it is rooted in the same stuff that I just told you about, you know, cross-linking of stiffening of tissues. So we see this a lot with people who have diabetes. They will sometimes develop diabetic complications if their blood sugar goes unmanaged for too long. And a lot of it is due to cross-linking. So you'll see stiffening of arteries, vessels. So you'll have macrobascular complications, atherosclerosis. With the retina, we'll see retinopathies, neuropathies, a lot of those are related to AGE damage, either through cross-linking or through the inflammatory cascade. So it's like this

horrible, like two-pronged thing that happens. It's really hard to get rid of AGEs once they're in the body, but it's really easy to kind of prevent it. And two of the biggest things to focus on or to make sure that you have healthy blood sugar because you can actually develop your own AGEs in the body. There are two types of AGEs, basically. They're exogenous, so they exist in the environment, like you can cook them in food, but also you can create them in our bodies. And everybody does naturally as we age, but it's accelerated in certain illnesses like in diabetes

when there's too much sugar in the body. You know, these free floating sugars can attach and rearrange to form AGEs. So that's why we see the manifestations of aging that we see in people with diabetes. So what would you say are kind of the role of we hear, you know, antioxidants, anti-inflammatory foods, what is that class of food actually and how can they be beneficial? Antioxidants and anti-inflammatory diet generally are good things, right? Like we want to have lower inflammation in the body.

when it comes to AGE specifically, the research is so weird. Like, I actually haven't seen that much compelling evidence that you can neutralize AGEs with superfoods. Like, I would love to just sit here and be like, eat these foods so that we can, but it actually it doesn't work like that. There's not a lot of data. It's, I kind of think of it as almost like, if you had a white carpet and you wanted to keep it clean, is it better to just not pour a bottle of ink on it and then try to like,

you know, clean it out later, or is it better to just, like, not do that? And then you'll keep the carpet clean. Like, you can't really, you know, like take it out. And I kind of think of it in the same way as AGE's. It's really, really hard to neutralize it and to kind of like get rid of them in the body. For the last few decades, especially since this field has come around, there's been so many different types of pharmaceutical drugs that have been tested out. None of them have really panned out. And there's mixed evidence as to what foods are best. There's some. Some limited evidence that certain spices and herbs that you can put in your food while you're cooking to kind of like minimize the production of AGEs and maybe like ingesting some of them is good. But it's not enough for me to sit here and be like, you know, here's the list of the greatest things to eat, unfortunately.

But I still think like an anti-inflammatory diet is great in general. And what does that mean? Usually just means like eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Right. And like. Colorful veggies generally. It's always the same advice, right? Yeah.

Yeah. what's up folks if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health performance fitness you may really enjoy getting a whoop that's right you can check out whoop at woup dot com it measures everything around sleep recovery strain and you can now sign up for free for 30 days so you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free you get to try it for 30 days see whether you want to be a member and that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. So for the first time and quite a long time, the average life expectancy in the U.S. has decreased. What's your take on this? I mean, diet has to be a

contributor, right? When we look at the prevalence of metabolic disorder and metabolic dysfunction in Americans, it's so interesting. If we just look at the data, I saw somewhere that over 60% of the average American diet is coming from ultra-processed foods. And there was a study last month. N. Hain's study that looked at the relationship between the intake of ultra-processed foods and biological aging. And it found that for every 10% of calories in a diet attributed to ultra-processed foods, participants aged an average of almost a quarter of a year more phenologically. So there's no gold standard for how to measure phenological age, but they did the best that they could given validated markers of aging. That's like pretty

crazy. You know, quarter of year older for every 10% of calories and the average American diet is 60% ultra-processed foods. And I get questions a lot on ultra-processed foods. And when I think about them, as a whole, ultra-process foods are, to me, adulterated foods. We start out with really great ingredients. But what does ultra-processing mean? I think a lot about how food is coat, right? Like we were just talking about advanced likeation and products and how high heat, high temperature, especially for foods that are high in fat and protein, will produce these pretty toxic compounds that people actually refer to it as glycotoxins. And they're pretty prevalent in ultra-process foods, right?

They tend to be pretty high in fructose. And fructose actually is 70 times more reactive than glucose in creating AGEs. It's kind of like this horrible storm when it comes to ultra-processed foods. I think for the longest time, and it's not anybody's fault, really, but it's more just like the field of nutrition is naturally like very reductionist. And we've zoned in so much on like components of food. So nutrients, micronutrients, macronutrients, calories. And we've kind of like broken that all down as much as possible and focused on that.

So much so that we like, we miss the forest for the trees. We didn't really even think about how food is cooked. You know, it's like if we've only thought about like components of things. also like diet trends have come and gone so much in the last few decades like I can't even remember the last ones from the last time I mean like keto paleo and I feel like people who try these trends are always somehow disappointed at the end because they never really worked out it's like something's missing like what is a miss right we're missing a critical piece of the puzzle and to me it's screaming out this whole field of advanced location end products and

processing, there's a whole step that happens between farm to fork that we don't think about and that's how food is processed. So my second answer to that question about why our life expectancy is decreasing, this might not be the answer that you're looking for, but I really believe that there is a collective loss of food culture in America. If you look at the longest living cultures around the world, they don't seem to have a lot in common, but when you kind of take a closer look, they all seem to have a very strong food culture. And what is a food culture? It is a collective understanding of health and food that's passed down as like meals together

and generational recipes, right? And people who kind of receive this gift are, they're not fooled by food marketing or like dumb food trends. They're really grounded in real food. And I think it's beautiful because a lot of traditional food is usually home coat and it follows a lot of the recommendations that we have anyways. like it's usually nutrient dense, full of plants, eaten with loved ones, which is actually supposed to be very important for longevity, and usually cooked in a way that is good for promoting

healthy aging. And I think here in the U.S., you know, we've kind of lost that connection because we're so busy, we're disconnected, we're stressed out. And it's almost like we've forgotten to play like an active role in the production of food and we've become these passive consumers. And in doing so, we've kind of become more susceptible to convenience foods. So I really think, you know, kind of like changing the conversation to really think about how food is made and becoming more active players in our food environment and, you know, playing an active role in the food that we eat is going to be so important for us just culturally. Ultra-processed foods, collective loss in food culture, which I wouldn't even have thought about that, but that just makes so much sense.

know, like when you, when it's part of your culture, you care about it and you spend time thinking about it, you know, and it's, you also make a great point that, you know, sitting down and eating a meal with loved ones, you know, reduces your heart rate and makes you feel connected and we know that human connection is correlated, you know, very strongly with, with longevity. So yeah, that's just beautiful that you brought that up. Thank you. And then what would be your number three? My number three, a third reason why longevity is not. I also think it's like we don't have the basics down. It's kind of funny.

Like people are so focused on the hacks and the protocols, right? And doing all these little things and the supplements. But when I talk to people sometimes, they're focused on all this minutiae, but yet they're not paying attention to the basics. And you guys, I feel like at WIP you guys really know what I'm talking about, like sleep. Yeah. You know, are you drinking water? Are you eating fruits and vegetables? No.

Right? One of the big rocks. I know. People, I'm like, folks, like, if you just. get, if you literally focus on getting the sleep that you need and focusing on sleep consistency and, you know, which will then drive sleep quality, you don't need to hack your way through the day. Thank you. Like you will be alert when you need to be alert and you will be sleepy when you need to be sleepy. We don't need all of these like protocols to like make our way through

the day. Like that is just yes. So I'm 100% on board with that. Yep. I'm like all about the 80-20 rule, right? And I tell people if you have access to a kitchen and a bed, the sun, a place to move, and your loved ones, you pretty much have everything that you need to live a healthy life. I love that so much. It's all right there. Just have to go get it. And then if you want to hack all other stuff and be Brian Johnson, like, that's totally fine too after you get the basics down. Totally. I love that. Yeah. I think we really have gotten kind of disconnected from the basics. And, you know, I think it's so wonderful. There's so much information out there and a lot of really wonderful, great information, you know. But I think, you know, just modern life kind of makes it hard.

You mentioned conveniences, microwave. Maybe let's just start there. Funny enough, I'm not against the microwave. Oh, that's great to hear because I use it every single day, multiple times a day. And I was just waiting to hear that the microwave is killing me. No, I'm a mom. I'm like, I'm eating stuff up on this. I mean, I heat my coffee up like literally 10 times in the span of like 40 minutes.

Yeah, I do too. I don't drink coffee, but I heat up other stuff in there a lot. Yeah. And it's actually, you know, when you look at different cooking methods, microwave is pretty great at new i mean it's not as good as using stove top and steaming but it's like you know semi up there in terms of nutrient retention and it you don't have to be so hard on yourself there are ways to do this conveniently and sustainably and still you know for the most part do pretty well with your diet i think some other conveniences like flash frozen produce so um oh tell me more so i was a researcher you know

nutrition scientists and trained as a dietitian and everything And then for the last 10 years, I was a founder, so I had my own food company that I sold a few years ago with my co-founders, and we sold to Jennifer Garner's baby food company called Once Upon a Farm. It was a baby food company. It was a baby food. And it focused on flash frozen foods to help parents steam their own baby food. So I guess it's always been the same theme of steaming. And I love flash frozen produce. They've done fresh, like, freshness tests on flash frozen produce and there's a lot of vitamin C retention and vitamin C is supposed to be a good proxy for how fresh vegetables stay after they're harvested and it's pretty good in flash frozen produce

it's not really there's not much to it they're just freezing it immediately after harvest is there a label on it that says flash frozen like how do we know if it was I mean pretty much all the the vegetables that you get in the freezer aisle are flash frozen are going to be flash frozen yeah because it's the I mean otherwise they're not fresh enough they just do it like right after harvest and they do it industrially, and so it's like super cold and just locks everything up. I think it's a great way to get your veggies. Usually they're chopped up already. They're low in EEs. Naturally, vegetables are going to be low in EEEs comparatively to meat. And I always tell people to get your, you know, get high quality protein, and I'll let people interpret it that however they want to.

I'm going to stay out of that conversation. But yeah. You don't want to do hand in combat in that area. Veggies in that sense are convenient and they're easy to cook with. And, um, They're all packaged and ready to go, and you don't have to feel bad about that kind of stuff, you know. I don't think, like, in a lot of my videos, I'm making stuff from scratch because aesthetically, it's more pleasing to people to see. Your videos are just so satisfying. I just, I really, yeah. There are some days where I'm like, whatever, like, let's just open up this bag of frozen veggies and do that. You know, it's totally fine.

Another thing I could mention about longevity is they have looked at markers of longevity with AGE Vsearch, and it's an inverse relationship. So the lower the AGEs in diet, the higher you're going to have of things like CERT 1, PPAR gamma, which are important for longevity, as you probably know. And like in mouse studies, PPR gamma is associated with lifespan also. So there's more movement now, you know, in terms of like trying to figure. out the exact mechanisms between AGE's and longevity. There was one recipe on which I'm like dying to try is like a sweet potato recipe.

But you mentioned reducing resistant starch. Yeah. Which I do with rice. But I'd love for you to just talk through what that process is and what are the benefits. If you're making rice or potatoes, sweet potatoes, and sometimes even people will freeze their bread, like you can cool down the starch in the fridge. sometimes people will even freeze portions of rice, which will make it more convenient so you can just take it out and microwave it. And the resistant starch actually, our bodies have a hard time

breaking it down. And so you're going to have less of a glucose spike or insulin response from the resistant starch. I don't think it's like a panacea. Like you can't just go and just eat rice all day long because, you know, it's like resistant starch. I got to preface it because You never know what people are going to hear. Yeah. It's a small but meaningful percentage decrease. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It can help. Yeah. So like if you're a busy person and you don't have a lot of time to be making, you know,

your rice or your own bread or whatever, you can do it in bulk and then put it in the fridge. I have personally a big freezer in my garage and I put a lot of stuff in there, broths and things. And it makes it more convenient for me to just take it out and defrost it. So for rice, for example, I heard this that you, you know, you put a tablespoon of MCT or or coconut oil in the rice as it's cooking. Somehow that helps produce the starch. Yeah. Yeah, which kind of from a molecular standpoint, I think that like it actually kind of

makes some sense. So then after you cook it, you put it in, you know, whatever, a pepperer, and then glass, and then you put it in the fridge immediately after cooking. And you leave it in there for a couple hours, three hours, and then you can expect to see the resistance of starch decrease. Oh, interesting. I haven't read that one yet. Yeah, I want to look into, does it have to be specifically MCT oil?

Or could it be, I think it's just, yeah, like a coconut oil. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. I'm going to try that next time. Yeah. I actually did a little test because I used to wear a CGM. And yeah, when they first kind of came out and just to understand my trends in that area

and just see where I was at. And it does seem to work. When I kind of ate rice, my glycemic response was high. My blood sugar response was higher versus when I practiced this. kind of resistant starch method. But I didn't disambiguate from the coconut oil and non-coconot oil. So I don't know the difference is there. Yeah, that's awesome. You did your own crossover study. So I sure did. Yeah, I'm a scientist. So, you know, I'm just all about experiments. I'm like that too. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. And when you have data, you can, you know, there's just

end of one constantly. Well, I mean, and if you're just, you know, trying to improve yourself, like, and it's working for you, then that's great. Yeah. Exactly. I'd love to dig in more, you know, into the water-based cooking. Did you have like kind of an aha moment where you're like, uh, whoa, this is actually the key. Yeah. I was sitting in a food science class at NYU, and my professor was talking about convenience foods and things. And then he dropped this bomb where he said, and everybody knows that high heat cooking produces these things called advanced location end products that age everybody. And I was like, what? He didn't say anything else about it after that. And then for two weeks, I don't think I slept at all. I was like, I kind of

hooked on to this concept and was scouring pub med, reading every single study. It just like set something off in me. I was like, wait, this makes so much sense. How does, how is no one talking about this? This is insane. I spent two weeks digging into it. And the fact that I think I grew up with such a predominant water-based cooking culture, it just brought everything to a whole other level of understanding and I felt like there was always this gap there. When I would share the research with other people and I was so interested in it, people would be like, well, I don't want to eat like boiled chicken. That sounds kind of gross. And so I felt like there was like this gap that I needed to fill. And it honestly took me over 10 years, mostly because I was scared

of social media. And secondly, I just didn't feel like people were ready to hear it yet. But in the last few years, you know, the conversation so much has shifted over to longevity and a more holistic way of living and ultra-processed foods and everything, and I feel like it was a perfect opportunity to start talking about it. Yeah, I love that. I agree. I think people in some ways are kind of slowing down a little bit, you know, just realizing, okay, I can't even cook a full meal because I'm so over-scheduled.

And my family is over-scheduled. And I think people are starting to take a step back a little bit like, wow, what am I actually doing here? You know, and so I think I'm so glad that you're bringing these messages forward. So thank you for that because I think if anything, you know, it's kind of reigniting, you know, this culture around food and cooking food and being just more intentional about what the process actually looks like. And I think a lot of the conversations that are happening just nationally around processed foods and just recognizing that the food industry is really broken. And if we want to kind of fix America's health, like that is kind of the place to start. So yeah, I mean, I just feel like your your message is so timely and really. important. So keep going. I'm so happy to be here. I mean, like I said, it's been an overdue conversation to have. So I'm just so happy to be spreading the news. And of course, this is still, you know, an emerging field because it's only like, I think, 40 years, about as old as I am,

like 40 years old, you know, which is kind of a long time in terms of research, but also not very long. And with the expense of clinical trials and everything, I think there needs to be a lot more done. But the evidence is, it's pretty strong. Like, I was looking at cancer research, you know, there are two huge trials, the prostate lung, colorectal and ovarian cancer trial, and they looked at 27,000 women. And women who ate the most AGEs in their diet had a 30% higher risk of breast cancer. And in men, there was the NIH-AARP diet and health study. And it looked at 528,000 people. And the men in the highest group who ate the most AGEs had a 43% higher risk of pancreatic cancer. We're seeing that, you know, this might be

the common driver for a lot of things related to aging and illness. We'll probably see a lot more about it in the future. Wow. I wonder, are there any biomarkers that move around or that are kind of good proxies for, you know, the damage that's caused by AGEs? Like how to, what's the, it's a hard thing to measure. So like I said, there's hundreds of compounds. The ones that are most prevalent in humans are carboxy methyllycine, so CML, and methylglyoxal, M.G. It's difficult to measure. These are not things that you normally would get measured in a doctor's office. It's more in a lab setting.

They had created something called like skin autoflorescence lighting. So there's a company that shines a UV light onto skin, and some AGs are actually fluorescent, so they'll light up. and the more fluorescent AGs light up, the more AGs you have cross-linked into your skin. So it's kind of a good-ish measurement for, you know, AGEs and your risk for developing vascular disease. They're actually kind of pushing it more as a screening for cardiovascular disease. But here's the thing, the technology was created in Europe, and so it's mostly working and validated in people really light skin.

Like, I don't even know if it's going to work on me. Wow. So it's kind of finicky in that. it has to be with the right skin tone and everything. So there's no real way to measure AG levels in the body? I mean, there are proxies. I still think hemoglobin A1C might be good for... That's probably the closest, yeah.

The closest. It's not, you're not measuring an AG, but you're measuring glycation on hemoglobin, which is like, you know, at least it's in the same ballpark. In terms of, like, monitoring exactly, you know, what your risk is, it's probably better to look at, you know, your risk for how your blood pressure is doing and, you know, all the same markers of healthy living. Unfortunately, I wish there was, you know, like a blood test or something that you could quickly take.

Yeah. Maybe in the future. But I think, you know, very clear, actively reducing AGE levels in the body is going to help reduce the risk of all sorts of, yeah. Maybe talk a little bit about Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative disease. Yeah. Yeah. So like I said, in the 80s, I think there was like this shift to thinking about Alzheimer's as type 3 diabetes to kind of highlight that connection between the insulin resistance and Alzheimer's. And even, you know, for people who have diabetes and uncontrolled blood sugar for a long time, they'll develop cognitive decline later on in life, which is very reminiscent of Alzheimer's. So it's all in the same ballpark. And if you look at Alzheimer's, you know, the risk of Alzheimer's doubles when you have someone who's a smoker or if they had type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis. And all of those things actually are

driven by AGEs. And it's the same thing. If you look at what I said with HEs, you know, can do one of two things. It'll attach to, it gets really sticky and attaches to other proteins and kind of globs onto them and causes plaques and things. And also can kick off inflammatory cascades and oxidative stress with the attachment to rage, the receptor for AGE. So in the brain, these two things are happening. The rage is actually on amyloid beta plaques. And so when it attaches, it will kick off all kinds of inflammation. We see a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier, also neuronal damage, damage to synapses and stuff.

So it's kind of like, it's a bad environment for cells to be in when everything is so inflammatory. And then also you have like the physical cross-linking of these like free floating proteins that are glumming up altogether. it's the same thing that happens in atherosclerosis. It's like an inflammatory environment for the vessels and also you have the physical hardening of the arteries due to all of the plaques. Here's the thing, though. You could just cook with water. I mean, yeah. I mean, of course, like, that's not all of it. You can also create your AGs in your own body soon. Of course, you want to maintain the best metabolic health that you can have by maintaining really good blood sugar. So, but when it comes to the diet, you know, if you look at chicken thighs, right, like you could either broil them and that creates like 10,000 AGE kilo units or you could poach them and creates like less than a thousand.

They did a study of people in New York and I think the average intake of AGEs was like 15 AGEE kilo units per day. And the researchers who have been at the forefront of this field recommended that we should be closer to five to seven thousand AGE kilo units per day. So even just eating something like bacon, which is a staple of Western breakfast. Oh my God, I love bacon. It's like, it's so good. I know. I'll eat bacon occasionally. But it's really bad.

But it's 91,000 18 kilo units for 100 grams. You're not going to absorb all of that. I think the absorption is like 10 to 30 percent depending on your kidney function, your hydration and like all these other things, food and stuff to take it with a grain of salt. but it's very easy to just concentrate on the foods that we should be eating. And then you can still have your bacon, but just do it, you know, maybe not all the time or something. No, totally. Yeah.

And to where you started, you know, you don't want to just suck the joy out of eating. But I think the reality is, you know, what we put into our body and how we're cooking and how the food is processed, like all of that actually does really matter. If we're thinking about our health and longevity and being able to improve our health span and be able to, you know, to live our values with joy and energy, like all of this kind of is related. So it sounds like there's relatively simple things that we can do to improve our situation, you know, to pay down a lot of the risks that you said are associated with not cooking our foods properly and, you know, just really having high levels of AGEs in our body.

What would be the number one thing? If you're to give our listeners just a laundry list of like super practical things that they can do, they could start doing. today to, you know, kind of reduce their levels of AGs in their body. Well, in terms of cooking methods, water-based cooking, of course, is the best. And that means cooking with steam, so steaming, which I think retains almost like 90% of nutrition and food. You could do, you know, other methods like poaching, slow simmer, like boiling. You don't want to do it too high temperature, but sometimes you'll have to do that to

cook certain foods. Anything with water is pretty much going to be better than most of the dry. heat cooking methods. The worst I would say is deep frying, which actually retains only 10%, I believe, of the nutrients in food. So you want to focus on nutrient retention. One thing that's really great, so a lot of people argue that, well, you don't want to cook food and water because water-soluble vitamins will leak into the water. And so you lose nutrition that way. And I hear that argument a lot. But what people forget is that you could just drink the water. So like if you make a broth, right? And this is very common.

in Asian cuisine, like with a hot pot or something, you make a big broth and you make it really flavorful and delicious. You can actually cook everything in there. There are so many dishes where it all starts with a broth. Like, for example, in Singapore, they have the best street food in the world, and their hawker centers have Michelin-Stard stalls where they sell boiled chicken. Literally, this Michelin-Star dish is boiled chicken, and it's called Heinan Chicken. and the reason why it tastes so good is because they start with this incredible broth,

and then they use the broth to cook the rice, they use the broth to cook the vegetables, they drink the broth after as part of the soup, they use the broth to cook the chicken, they use the broth to make the sauces, and it's so amazing to see that it all comes from one pot. So there are definitely ways to make it really delicious and still retain nutrients. So back to three things I would focus on, I'd focus on thinking about the way that we cook and process our food. And if you can, really start to play with different ways to cook with water, which is super fun, actually. And I am a big proponent of it, as you know. And any inspiration you need, just go to Dr. Davenforce. Oh, yeah. Instagram page. I have a lot of recipes. So many recipes.

Marinating with acid is also great. You know, like I said, I'm married to a big barbecue guy. And that will get us through the summer. Some other things, you know, focusing on the basics and making you're getting a lot of plants into your diet. And then the third is probably avoiding ultra-processed foods. There are so many convenience foods that are not ultra-processed foods, like I said, with the flash frozen veggies and stuff. So I think, you know, swapping that out for better. And the flash-frozen foods are relatively affordable, too. So for people at different income levels, like, you know. Yeah. And the thing that I love about this research is that I feel like it empowers everyone. Like, I'm not telling anyone to go and buy anything special.

Like, I hope that you have access to clean water. And if you do, that's pretty much all you need in order to cook this way. It works with any type of cuisine. It's very affordable. You know, I like that that anyone can do it, really. Is there anything that you want to say about water? Because I've had to, like, this core to this. If the water isn't perfect, say it's from the tap, but you're boiling it.

Does that kind of get the water to the best possible place? or do you need to, you know, what's the path to really great water that's not actually harming us? I mean, that is like a whole other conversation about water and, like, microplastics. I was going to ask you about plastic too, but that maybe is a part two. Well, you know, I've actually spent a year trying to, I don't do any sponsorships, but I've been considering like maybe people want to know where they can get the best water. And so I've been researching like different companies. And to be honest, I haven't found one that I'm comfortable enough to stand behind and be like, this is the one.

But I do always say, just get the best water that you can find. And sometimes that is tap water. Like if you're lucky enough to live in a place where your tap water is really clean, I believe that, I don't know what website it is, but you can get free water reports online to get an indication of what your water is like, if you're on town water, they're required to send you quarterly reports. And this is actually, I just got one of ours. And it's like, by the way, our water is really bad for you. Like, it just, like, has lead in and all sorts of problems. So, yeah, anyway, not good. But. Yeah.

And I have little kids. And so I was also really worried about the lead and everything. And so I just put in a few years, I put in like a five-stage reverse osmosis filter, which I'm pretty happy with. But, of course, there's always something. Then when people were like, well, sometimes the filter is made of plastics. And so you get nanoparticles. I'm like, okay, I can't, I can't control everything. Yeah.

But whatever it is, like, do your best to find the best water that you can have. Obviously, boiling it is going to kill off any bacteria, and so that's going to be a good way to sanitize it. I can't speak for, you know, the water, like, conditions in the U.S. It's unfortunate. I feel like clean water is a human right, and everyone should have access to clean water. And it makes me really sad that we have, you know, like the problems that we have with water these days. I know. I don't think about that a lot.

Yeah. What would be like a typical three-mail day that you would have with your family or that you'd recommend for folks that maybe meals that feel kind of accessible, but that really kind of hit, you know, all of the criteria in your mind? So for breakfast, I actually love oatmeal. A lot of people like to hate on oatmeal, but I like it. So I'll actually make something called custard oatmeal in the morning. So I, yeah, it's just oats, slow coat with water. And then I kind of like do this thing where I turn it into like a like a vanilla unglaze sauce. So I'll put a bunch of eggs in and temper it with milk.

And sometimes I do it with soy milk also. And it turns it into this like delicious high protein custardy thing that's cooked with water. Do you have that online? I do. Is that? Okay. Yeah. And sometimes I'll like dust it with a little macha or a little cacao or something and put a bunch of berries on it.

Yeah. Cinnamon. I mean, it's delicious. And it sounds like. I'm eating custard with fruit. It's so good. And you can actually also do it like in the instant pot really quickly. So I'll do that sometimes like in bulk. And then, you know, my kids will eat it and that's always a win. I'll do that. And then for lunch, most of the time, to be honest, lunch is just leftovers from dinner, like running around a lot. And I just have like a bunch of thermoses and I'll

pack up whatever I had for dinner. And for dinner the other day I made something called giyudon, which is like a Japanese beef bowl. So I had. rice and then a bunch of veggies that I had simmered with this beef. And the beef is simmered in a dashy stock with like soy sauce and some other stuff. It's very flavorful. And I just cook the vegetable straight into it and eat that over rice. I think it took me less than 15 minutes to make. So like super easy. I like to make things in bulk and then I can just kind to eat it for multiple meals. Yeah. I think that's an amazing strategy. Beautiful. Well, I can't thank you enough for your time today. It's been such a fun conversation and this information.

Like I said, I mean, I feel this is going to be super helpful for folks in terms of thinking about techniques that really are actually health promoting. I don't think we just think about that a whole lot. So this is really wonderful information. I'm just so happy to be here. I really just want people to know that probably the best thing we can do for ourselves health-wise is just to live like actual humans do human things and then you'll you'll be fine so I know I know that's that's that's so true I think about that a lot you know just aligning with the natural light dark cycle and just yeah and yeah go call your mom you know yeah connect with other humans yeah yeah oh well thank you so much Michelle thank you so much if you enjoyed this episode of the whoop podcast

please leave a rating or review check us out on social at whoop at Will Ahmed if you give a question what's the answer on the podcast, email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508 443-4952. If you think about joining whoop, you can visit whoop.com, sign up for a free 30-day trial membership. New members can use the code will, WI-L, to get a $60 credit on whoop accessories when you enter the code at checkout. That's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green. Thank you.