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Junk food ups diabetes risk

Avoiding fast food such as burgers and fried chicken may cut your risk of developing type 2 diabetes - the kind closely linked to obesity.

Junk food ups diabetes risk

Avoiding fast food such as burgers and fried chicken may cut your risk of developing type 2 diabetes - the kind closely linked to obesity.

Regularly eating high calorie fast foods is widely viewed as a contributing factor to the growing number of people with bulging waistlines. Moreover, it is well established that becoming overweight or obese greatly increases a person's chance of developing (type 2) diabetes. To look into the relationship between restaurant meal consumption and development of type 2 diabetes, researchers followed 44,072 African American women aged between 30 and 70 years and free of diabetes at the start of the study in 1995. The participants completed food-frequency questionnaires that asked them about the frequency of eating restaurant meals of various types.

It was found that those who ate fast food burgers or fried chicken at least twice a week were 40 to 70 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes over 10 years than their counterparts who never ate these calorie-laden foods. Junk food eaters also had a greater body mass index (BMI), ranging between 28 and 29. BMI is a standard measure used to gauge how fat or thin a person is. A normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9. The junk food eaters also gained more weight during the course of the study. 

In the 2,873 women who developed diabetes over 10 years, the researchers noted greater likelihood for the blood sugar disorder in frequent burger and fried chicken eaters, but not eaters of other fast foods, when they allowed for age, education, family history of diabetes, and lifestyle and dietary factors linked to diabetes risk. However, allowing for body mass reduced the burgers/fried chicken and diabetes link, indicating that associated weight gain that comes with eating too much fast food explains most of the diabetes cases.

The above findings have identified junk food as a risk factor for type 2 diabetes that may be readily modifiable by dietary changes.

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