
Functional Nutritionist Ms Jieun Wrigley, Nuffield Nutrition
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Please be fairly warned that what I am about to tell you in this article will be highly unpopular. In fact, after reading this article, you might even call me the Scrooge of the festive season!
Or if I am lucky, maybe you will see this as invaluable information to help avoid inflammageing (yes, it is a real word!). But if you are looking for insights to kickstart the new year feeling younger and in high hopes, read on.
Inflammageing is a steady increase in pro-inflammatory biomarkers as we age. This is not due to some overt infection, but rather chronic low-grade inflammation that occurs unbeknownst to the untrained eye.
Symptoms may include a weak immune system, fatigue, bloating, headaches, weight gain, high blood pressure and other seemingly innocuous reoccurring symptoms. Our fond indulgence in unhealthy festive foods is a main driver of inflammageing.
You may wonder what do our favourite festive foods have to do with chronic inflammation? Well, actually…everything! Food means many things to us. It is connected to our taste, culture, comfort and memories.
But at its fundamental core, food is an environmental chemical that affects our cellular epigenetics (how we control our gene expression) and hence, our health. But rarely do we think this way.
Before jumping into why our favourite festive foods might be causing inflammation and ageing us faster, let us first contextualise health in Singapore today.
According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), the prevalence of diseases such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure in adults (age 18-69 years) in Singapore is almost 40%, while diabetes and obesity affect about 10% of the adult population. Alarmingly, Singapore ranks second in the world for prevalence of kidney failure.
Now consider festive treats like pineapple tarts, bak kwa, sugee cookies, love letters, fruit cakes, Christmas pudding and honey baked “pre- glazed” festive meats.
What do you think these festive foods have in common?
SUGAR AND AGEs
We all know that refined sugar and extra empty calories are bad for us. It takes a good, nuanced nutritionist to tell you that sugar increases inflammatory mediators and certain pro-inflammatory cytokines in various tissues.
This creates an internal environment of low-grade chronic inflammation, which is flagged up during diagnosis as elevated levels of clinical markers like CRP, IL-6 and TNF-a.
But it takes a functional nutritionist to highlight to you that you have to look beyond the sugar and the pro-inflammatory cascade, and delve deeper in order to understand how food impacts your internal body environment.
We need to account for the creation of AGEs, which age us – pun intended. Sadly, many festive foods not only have high sugar and caloric content, the excessive sugar also results in the formation of AGEs which accumulate in our body tissues.
AGEs
The answer to the question of what many festive foods have in common is: these foods all contain a heterogeneous group of harmful compounds called advanced glycation end products (AGEs).
Internally, AGEs are formed when protein or fat combine with sugar in the bloodstream.
This process is called glycation. These irreversible byproducts of glycol-oxidative reactions between reducing sugars and amino compounds have fanciful-sounding names like carboxymethyl-lysine (CML), fructose-lysine, methylglyoxal-derived hydroimidazolones, pyrraline and acrylamide.
They are all harmful and these are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of known AGEs.
More crucially, AGEs can also form in foods. Foods that have been exposed to high temperatures, such as during grilling, frying, baking or roasting (basically any cooking method with temperatures above 120°C), tend to be very high in these harmful compounds.
In fact, diet is the biggest contributors of AGEs in our body as we are often exposed to exogenous AGEs through the foods we eat.

Functional Nutritionist Ms Jieun Wrigley during one of her consultations @Nuffield Nutrition, Wheelock Place
AGEs accumulate in our body tissues throughout our lifespan.
The more of them we have, the higher the association with pathogenesis of age-related diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases, heart disease, diabetes, insulin resistance and cancer.
While cooking food is important for hygiene purposes, the keyis the cooking temperature – 120°C.
This is why boiling and steaming are healthier methods of cooking because water boils at 100°C and not beyond. Staying below the temperature threshold of 120°C reduces the chances of AGE formation.
MANAGING YOUR FESTIVE FEAST
In the world of functional nutrition, we go beyond treating the symptoms. It is about taking a detailed look at a person’s diet and other lifestyle factors to understand the hurdles that are preventing them from living their best life.
I often remind people that the festive seasons are about much more than food. They are about connecting with our loved ones, our culture and our community.
As totally avoiding festive foods is usually not possible, we should look at modifications or alternatives. Modifying traditional festive recipes may feel sacrilegious, but look at the long run, it is great for your (and everybody’s) health.
Try the below swaps for your upcoming festive feasts:
- For pineapple tarts, swap refined wheat flour with almond/coconut flour for the crust. Use fresh rather than canned pineapples.
- For sugee cookies, swap refined sugar with coconut sugar. Add spices like cinnamon or nutmeg for natural sweetness, and replace butter with applesauce.
- For love letters, change refined sugar to honey or date syrup. Try coconut milk for a dairy free option.
- For fruit cakes, replace butter with applesauce. Use naturally dried unsweetened fruits, mashed bananas or dates for sweetness.
For Christmas pudding, swap sweetened dried fruits with an unsweetened mix of fruits soaked in fresh orange juice. Add in chia seeds or flaxseeds for more texture.
For pre-glazed festive meats, it is actually best to avoid them and eat fresh meats in stews or soups instead.
The swaps above do not necessarily reduce the AGE load, but they will hopefully add more nutrients, and reduce the refined sugars and flours in your holiday treats. They are a baby step in the right direction.
However, in my capacity as a functional nutritionist, I do feel that these swaps fall a little short of a healthy low-AGE festive diet, because they are still high-heat processed.
Thus, if you are serious about reducing your AGE load, take a look at the below tips to really make an impact:
Water-Based Cooking: Water-based cooking techniques, such as steaming, poaching, blanching, stewing, slow cooking and boiling, are the new anti-ageing and anti- inflammageing hack.
These methods can create festive dishes that retain moisture, nutrients and flavour. But more importantly, they reduce the AGE load as water heats to 100°C and no further.
Cook New Festive Dishes: Instead of standard treats like pineapple tarts, bak kwa, fruit cakes, Christmas pudding, honey-baked “pre-glazed” festive meats and so on, try these new dishes:
- Spiced poached pears with cinnamon
- Steamed sweet potato pudding with nutmeg
- Poached apples with ginger and vanilla
- Steamed herb-stuffed fish
These festive recipes are easy to make and your guests will be pleasantly surprised by your novel dishes. They also allow you to enjoy festive sweets without high AGE load.
KEEPING PERSPECTIVE
A lot of people use the festive seasons as an excuse to indulge. Practically speaking, our body cannot tell the difference between a festive holiday and a regular day.
Every day, whether they are holidays or not, our body has to manage a multi-faceted complex system of biochemical pathways. Nourishing these pathways daily is important.
In Charles Dickens’s famous tale A Christmas Carol, it was no surprise to see Ebenezer Scrooge been visited by the three ghosts – Past, Present and Future.
They helped to give him perspective. During the upcoming holidays, keeping perspective and reflection is key to making changes in the present that will impact your future.
In my practice, I constantly see people trying to transform themselves for the better.
So if you are ready for a bright new year and want to learn more about reducing your inflammageing, get in touch with me at my clinic!