Food advanced glycation end products as potential endocrine disruptors: An emerging threat to contemporary and future generation

Guna Ravichandran

Abstract

Mankind exposure to chemicals in the past century has increased dramatically. Processed foods have become trending due to their taste, convenience, and cheap. Manufacture of fast foods involves extreme temperatures on processing or preparation results in the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), familiarly known as Maillard products which could independently promote health impacts. Humans secrete over fifty different hormones to regulate fundamental physiological functions including metabolism, growth, and development, etc. Interestingly, hormones can be intervened by a huge number of chemical stressors called endocrine disruptors (EDs). Prevalent studies have estimated the economic burden of endocrine diseases with high probability causation by EDs to be €157 billion annually in the European Union. Despite, over 1400 different chemicals have been suspected as EDs, searching for the novel EDs remains active. In the scope of such context, based on the substantial evidence documented until, we have hypothesized and reviewed the emergence of food AGEs as potential EDs Both economically and in terms of human life, AGEs may represent an enormous cost for the future society. Therefore, addressing their novel role in endocrine diseases in this platform, we could possibly make an impact on food AGEs exposure among the general public.