Item #10
New
Study Shows Fast Food and TV, Triple Obesity Risk, Except for Blacks?
Eating
fast food and sitting hours on end in front of the TV are really
terrible for the waistline.
As
obvious as this might sound, there actually is little firm scientific
data to prove the point, especially against fast food. But now a large
study released Saturday shows just how bad super-sized burgers and
nonstop tube time can be for one's health.
"Fast
food emphasizes primordial preferences for salt and fat," said
researcher Mark Pereira. "This may promote overeating."
The
project did turn up one surprise: While a lot of fast food is clearly
bad for white people, it seems to make no difference at all for
blacks.
The
reason for this is unclear, but the researchers said the data suggest
that black people's diets are often just as unhealthy at home as they
are at the drive-through window. So a lot of fast food doesn't make
matters any worse than they already are.
The
analysis, conducted by Pereira of Boston's Children's Hospital, was
based on a 15-year follow up of 2,027 whites and 1,726 blacks between
ages 18 and 30 in Chicago, Minneapolis, Birmingham, Ala. and Oakland,
Calif. He presented the data at a meeting in Miami Beach of the
American Heart Association.
The
key findings:
Whites
who eat fast food twice or more a week have a 50 percent greater risk
of obesity than do those who eat this way once or less.
Their
risk of abnormal glucose control, an inability to break down sugar
efficiently that often foreshadows diabetes, is double.
Whites
who eat fast food more than twice a week and also spend at least 2 1/2
hours a day watching television have triple the risk of both obesity
and abnormal glucose control, compared to those who eat out once or
less and watch no more than an hour and a half of TV.
"It's
clearly the composition of fast food meals that we feel plays a role,
with a lot of saturated fat and low quality carbohydrates, white bread
and lots of soda," said Pereira. "And what you are not
getting is also critical, including fiber and more healthful types of
fats. It's a dietary pattern that is the opposite of what's
recommended for health."
And
of course, there are all those calories. A super size fast food meal
may exceed 1,600 calories, more than many people should eat in an
entire day.
Many
of the men and women in the study had fast food more than three times
a week. Exactly what they ate didn't seem to matter much. Fries,
burgers, breakfast sandwiches and nuggets all meant a greater risk of
obesity.
Dr.
Robert Eckel, director of clinical research at the University of
Colorado, noted that the people studied are at unusually high risk of
weight gain, since people pile up the most pounds between ages 25 and
34.
While
the hazards of hyper-caloric meals and vegging out in front of the
tube are clear, people who do these things probably have other bad
habits, as well. "I suspect it relates to an overall lifestyle
that is not conductive to good health," Eckel said.
Pereira
said the lack of ill effect of fast food on young blacks was
"very surprising." The reason may be that "blacks have
a much poorer diet than whites, with less fiber and greater intake of
soda," when they eat at home, "so blacks who don't eat much
fast food still have a much poorer diet."
On
the other hand, whites eating at home often appear to get reasonably
healthy food, more like the menus recommended by the heart association
and other health organizations.
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