Do Fast Food Binges Lead to Liver Damage?
A new study again confirms that eating fast foods not only causes weight gain, but also rapidly damages the liver. The 18 participants of the new Swedish study had transformations that mirrored filmmaker Morgan Spurlock in his controversial 2004 documentary "Super Size Me."
For anyone who did not see the documentary, Spurlock spent one month eating all of his meals from McDonald's to document exactly what would happen to his body on a 100% fast food diet. The startling results included various physical ailments that ranged from low sex drive and facial acne to gaining almost 25 pounds and suffering severe liver damage.
In the new study, the 18 healthy participants ate fast food meals two times a day averaging over 5000 calories per day. According to one physician, the fat consumption alone was the equivalent of eating "3 sticks of butter a day." The average weight gain for the study participants was approximately 16 pounds, with one participant gaining 26.5 pounds in the one month period.
Liver Disease?
What was even more serious than the rapid weight gain was the blood tests that showed liver damage and demonstrated "a significant risk of developing end-stage liver disease and a lower chance of survival mainly because of cardiovascular disease," according to Dr. Fredrik H. Nystrom, the primary investigator.
The liver functions to help breakdown fats for energy, but according to Professor Keith-Thomas Ayoob, when fat consumption drastically increases, "the liver cannot keep up with the higher fat levels and the fat eventually infiltrates the liver cells causing liver damage."
One other finding that was surprising was just how quickly fast food started to damage the liver- 14 of the 18 subjects had elevated liver enzymes indicating liver damage after only one week on the diet.
Click here to view the whole study.
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Created / Updated: January 23, 2012
That scares me. I often eat that much when I am studying.
BAAAAD!
ReplyThose are some truly shocking statistics. I'm no fan of fast food personally (if I'm paying to eat out, I'd rather pay a bit more and eat something decent!) but that study shows just how easy it is to gain weight on such a diet.
"Three sticks of butter a day" is a revolting image, isn't it? Maybe we should count sticks of butter or bags of sugar instead of calories!
Ali
ReplyToo bad it wasn't "the equivalent of 3 sticks of butter" causing the damage to the liver - the lead researcher on this one, when interviewed, specifically attributed it to the sugar and excessive carbohydrate load in the diet...not even the abstract comes close to hinting it was the fat in the diet that was a problem, and the full-text certainly didn't either.
ABC News didn't bother to call the lead researcher and instead asked a stable-doc his opinion and he gave them a shock quote - the three sticks of butter thing.....the Yahoo! News reporter, Marlow Hood, on the other hand, took the time to not only read the full-text, she contacted the lead researcher too.
From the Yahoo News piece:
That signs of liver damage were linked to carbohydrates was another key finding, he said.
"It was not the fat in the hamburgers, it was rather the sugar in the coke," he said.
But the most startling result implies that an intensive fast food diet might have some health benefits too, apparently from fat.
ReplyYou are correct!
ABC News might have a science editor beholden to the grains industry. Stranger things have happened.
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I had actually been in shock over the statement that a high-fat diet can cause liver damage, and did a bit of my own research, to track down an origin for this claim.
And there it was.
High-fat diet makes mice susceptible to liver injury:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-11/jws-hfd110107.php
Yeah, no kidding? Mice are not intended to eat a high fat diet!
From Wikipedia:
"Mice are often portrayed to enjoy cheese and people sometimes use it as mousetrap bait, though mice actually do not like cheese[2] due to its fatty texture. Instead, they like food that contains high sugar."
Mice have a much better carbohydrate metabolism than fat metabolism. The same cannot be said for other animals, who all metabolize the macronutrients differently.
For example, cats are meant to run on protein and some fat. Nature's perfect carnivore, their protein metabolism is second-to-none. Carbohydrates make cats fat.
So considering the failings of this claim, what did the study actually prove? The study shows that mice who are made obese, steatotic, and resistant to insulin suffer greater liver damage when injected with a bacterial toxin.
Why must they blame fats for making the mice that way? The same thing would occur to humans who became similarly disabled by any means, most likely through carbohydrates which cause insulin secretion, resulting in insulin resistence, obesity and eventual steatosis.
This study did not benefit from the use of a shock title, that had no relevance to its actual findings. What a way to throw away good research. When will they learn?
ReplyABC's Dr. Ayoob, who was asked about the study and quoted in the ABC artile on it - “is on the United Soybean Board and General Mills Bell Institute Speakers Bureaus and has presented at numerous national professional conferences.”
http://www.soyconnection.com/speakers_experts/health_experts.php?expert=7
ReplyEewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
ReplyFast food that often, can you imagine?
I mean, I indulge here and there with a single Chick Fil A sandwich (no butter) but that friggin often? I'd not be able to keep my food down.
is that true?im a person who loves to eat in a fast food chains. now, i will limit myself eating in some fast food chains..how sad..:(
ReplyIf you read this blog why would you eat fast food on a regular basis? Pathetic.
ReplyGimme a triple western bacon with cheese and biggie fries!
ReplyActually it's all crap - suggest you eat tofu instead.
ReplyHow much of the negative health results are due to the fast-food diet itself, and how much is due to the massive change in the normal eating habits of the study subjects? Morgan Spurlock admits that he ate pretty healthy until his one-month experiment at MacDonald's. These Swedish study participants presumably had a very different diet before and after the study period. So my question is, would the results be as dramatic for people who ate this way all the time? Yes, such a life-long diet has been shown to increase one's chances of various serious health problems. But are the blood test results similarly skewed for the long-term fast-foodies? Just wondering.
ReplyI mentioned this in my latest post on unstarved.com. It occurs to me that all the people I know who eat fast food every day do so after a late night at the bars.
ReplyFalse. It has been scientifically proven by some Norweigan scientists that fast food contains the sugar and sodium that is required to maintain a healthy balanced weight. My boss, Michael Scott, went on an adventure out in the wild and tried to survive in the wilderness. I followed him and I was able to save his life, because he was dying of starvation and ate a poisonous mushroom. Do you see now that fast food is healthy and vital in one's life? But if you want a plant that is very nutritous, eat beets. Beets are the most healthy vegetable in the entire Solar System. You can make a beet burger, beet fries, and make wine from beets. Beets are too good.
Bears beets Battlestar Galactica.
ReplyThat's a good one!
ReplyI, too, like beets.
ReplyLink to study please.
ReplyBeets ARE too good, and as a bonus, one of the few foods that can turn the waste products of your body into a technicolor spectacle. Many years ago, when I was first introduced to beets, I told my husband I was suffering from some sort of hemorrhage and asked if he would take me to emergency. Luckily he was wise enough to ask, "did you eat the beets at dinner?"
Replyhttp://blog.nbc.com/DwightsBlog/
This is my blog page.
I am the best salesman in Dunder Mifflin.
ReplyHow much did the subjects get paid in this study! Jeez they developed "a lower chance of survival", sign me up!!!
Anyway my complaint with studies like this is that if you ate 5000 calories a day of anything you would gain weight and have health problems. Maybe fast-food more so than others but I think a study with not-so-gross-amounts of calories would be more interesting. Maybe do a fancy shmancy BMR test then get each patient to eat just that many calories of "fast food" a day for 4 weeks then check them out.
-Josh
ReplyIt sounds like a bunch of Blowing Smoke to me.
ReplyYeah, I pretty much swore off fast food after one of my profs in college showed us the results of an experiment that he did with his grad students. He took a blood sample after they had been fasting 8 hours and then fed them 2 Sausage biscuits, 2 cups of whole milk, and 2 hash browns from McDonald's. After only 45 minutes, he took another blood sample. The plasma from the fasting sample was clear (like it should be) and the plasma from the post-McD's meal was thick and cloudy with fat that was going directly to the liver to be transformed into chylomicrons that hang around in your blood until they get processed into cholesterol. Nasty stuff, I'm telling you. I can definitely see the link between a high fat diet and liver disease.
ReplyFast Food: How to make your own Fois Gras
Reply