A diet that is based on high-heat-treated foods increases markers associated with an enhanced risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in healthy people. Replacing high-heat-treatment techniques by mild cooking techniques may help to positively modulate biomarkers associated with an increased risk of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases.

Industrial processing of infant formulas (IFs) induces the formation of Maillard products, namely N epsilon-(carboxymethyl)lysine (CML). CML content is expected to be several times higher in IFs than in fresh human breast milk. To elucidate whether CML is absorbed from IFs into the bloodstream, CML concentration in the plasma and urine were analyzed in 6-month-old infants (34 breast fed and 25 fed exclusively with IFs) and in 56 samples of human breast milk and 16 commercial IFs. We found that IFs contain higher amounts of CML compared to mother's milk (median: 70-fold; range: 28- to 389-fold), and CML content was higher in hydrolyzed IFs than in nonhydrolyzed IFs (P < 0.03). Plasma CML levels were 46% higher (P < 0.01) and urinary excretion of CML was 60-fold higher (P < 0.001) in the formula-fed infants than in the breast-fed group. Infants fed with hydrolyzed IFs displayed significantly higher plasma CML levels than those on nonhydrolyzed formulations. We conclude that CML from IFs is absorbed into the circulatory system and is rapidly excreted in the urine.

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Dietary Maillard products (MP) may exert both a positive and a negative health impact (1) . Neither the bioavailability nor the global health effect in healthy subjects of MP produced in common heat-treated foods in the Western diet are known, which impedes the evaluation of the related risk (2) . The aim of the present study was to: quantify the exposure to MP, including carboxymethyllysine (CML), fluorescent MP (FMP) and acrylamide, in a normal diet with conventional cooking methods, including grilling, roasting and frying and in a diet of steam-cooked food; assess the contribution of different foods to total exposure; evaluate CML and FMP bioavailability.Sixty-two non-smoking healthy volunteers were assigned randomly to 4 weeks on a normal diet (high MP) and a steam-cooked nutritionally-equivalent (low MP) diet in a cross-over design. MP content was evaluated chemically in the complete diet and in some specific foods, as well as in faeces, plasma and urine. CML was quantified using GC-MS/MS (3) and FMP were determined from the parallel factor analysis decomposition of 3-D spectra derived from diluted samples (biological samples and mixed meal supernatant fractions) or directly from the mixed meal utilizing a front-face acquisition mode (4) . With the normal diet 500 mg acrylamide and 6 mg CML were absorbed, but replacing conventional cooking by steam cooking or minimal processing resulted in a 2-fold-5-fold decrease in absorption. The same fluorophore composition was observed in the meals, the faeces and the urine, but not in fasting plasma. A comparison of the biological levels after the two diets indicated a 10-15% absorption rate and approximately 100% CML and FMP urinary excretion rates. De novo synthesis of CML and FMP from absorbed dietary substrates was suggested by the 10 % decrease (P < 0.001) in plasma protein-bound CML and FMP after the steam-cooked diet compared with the normal diet. The metabolic impact of endogenous exposure to MP is presented elsewhere (5) . The present study is the first to quantify precisely the dietary exposure to various MP derived from a normal diet, as well as the lowering effect of steam cooking. The biovailability of the most common MP is also clearly demonstrated for food prepared conventionally. Correlations between biological MP levels and metabolic variables suggest a rapid and significant negative bioactivity of such compounds. It can be concluded that steam cooking is an efficient way of reducing exposure and improving many metabolic variables, including insulin resistance index, TAG and long-chain n-3 fatty acids. The specific MP involved and the mechanism remain to be elucidated.

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