Dr. Vlassara’s A.G.E.-Less Diet: How Chemicals in the Foods We Eat Promote Disease, Obesity, and Aging and the Steps We Can Take to Stop it

Imagine naturally occurring toxins that form in the body and are directly responsible for inflammation, chronic diseases, and aging. While that may not have been what Dr. Helen Vlassara was looking for when she began her work at the research laboratories of Rockefeller University, it was what her pioneering team discovered in 1985. Initially, the group’s mission was to better understand why patients with diabetes were prone to develop heart, eye, kidney, nerve, and circulatory disorders, as well as other signs of premature aging. It was obvious that over time, these disorders would diminish a diabetic’s quality of life. But what was the factor that created such havoc in the patient’s body? The team focused on a class of compounds they discovered, naming themadvanced glycation end products, which they shortened to AGEs