Interesting New Research on the Origins of Allergies

[tex]

This research claims that that eating "fast food", particularly hamburgers, increases the risk of various allergies, even including pollen allergies.

Linked between Consumption of fast food and asthma, other allergic diseases

Here's an abstract of the original research article published in Respirology:

Is the consumption of fast foods associated with asthma or other allergic diseases?

This is strictly a guess, but since this seems somewhat illogical (why should "fast food" be any more likely to promote allergies than "slow food", I'm guessing that the researchers selective chose the research projects on which they based their research so that the results would support their agenda. IOW, they threw out projects that contradicted their agenda and selected those that did. In the trade, this is known as "cherry-picking", in order to get the desired results in an overview study.

Note that this is a Chinese study, and the Chinese government is quite concerned about the recent trend toward more and more young people in the country adopting an "unhealthy Western diet" (and everyone loves to tout the presumed "unhealthiness" of Western "fast food".


On the other hand — who knows? . . . maybe they're right.

Tex

[eshuler]

Hi Tex,

Just a thought on this. Many fast food hamburgers contain soy, preservatives, fillers, and other animal tissue (https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... lly_eating) could these be triggers for allergies? I do agree with you that the study wasn't done very well and was cherry picked. However, fast food in a lot of places isn't really made up of what they say it is and I think further study would be useful.

[tex]

Hi Liz,

The problem is that all processed food contains loads of those kinds of ingredients. Yes, I believe that gluten, soy, and derivatives of milk are a huge source of food allergies, but I don't see why "Fast Food" is any different from the other processed foods, except that it usually contains more fat (which gives it its flavor). But no one can be allergic to fat — fat is not an allergen. As far as I can tell, other than fat content, the ingredients used in "Fast Food" are no different than the ingredients used in processed foods in general. Currently, they're all in the process of cleaning up their act (ingredient list), and I believe that will pay dividends in terms of human health, in the long-term.

Tex