Eating more of the kinds of foods that have extra AGEs—like grilled or fried meats—for six weeks doesn’t seem to raise the levels of a specific marker in the blood or urine of healthy middle-aged and older adults, meaning those foods probably don’t make your body’s AGE burden much worse than it already is.

If you're a healthy adult between 50 and 69 and you eat less of certain grilled, fried, or processed foods for 6 weeks, your body shows about 11% less of a harmful compound in your blood and 44% less in your urine—meaning what you eat really can lower this marker of aging and inflammation.

If you eat the same amount of food with the same carbs, fats, and calories—but just change how many AGEs (chemicals formed when food is cooked at high heat) are in it—for six weeks, your blood sugar, cholesterol, and related body signals don’t change. So, those cooked-food chemicals probably don’t mess with your metabolism in the short term.

Eating more or fewer AGEs—chemicals found in grilled or fried foods—for six weeks doesn’t seem to change inflammation levels in healthy people aged 50 to 69, so short-term diet changes like this probably don’t affect body-wide inflammation.