A new study published in the Journal of Diabetes Care suggests that hamburgers, fries and other foods fried at high temperatures can negatively impact blood vessels, leading to heart disease.

Fatty foods cooked at high temperatures are high in compounds called advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which previous research has found may cause a short-lived but marked dysfunction in blood vessel dilation which can in turn lead to heart disease.

Lead researcher Dr Jaime Uribarri, from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said, ‘Although the effect was temporary, it suggests that AGEs could, over time, pose a significant risk to the vascular integrity of both diabetic and healthy persons’.

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A new Dutch study has found that a diet high in processed carbohydrate-rich foods may increase women’s risk of developing heart disease.

A diet high in rapidly-absorbed carbohydrates (high glycaemic index – GI) was found to go hand-in-hand with increased rates of cardiovascular disease, particularly among overweight women.

Researchers from the University Medical Centre Utrecht studied 16,000 women for nine years. The women were all aged between 49 and 70 years of age at the start of the study, and were all free of heart-disease. After nine years, 556 of the women had developed heart disease, and 243 had suffered strokes.

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