Tuesday, 24 December 2013
Junk Food and Alzheimer’s: Closer Links Than Once Believed
For most parents, packing their kids’ school lunches in the morning may seem like just a routine task, but it turns out to be a really important one. Not only can it influence children’s future eating habits, but it may also have a major impact on their quality of life when they are old enough to be grandparents themselves.
Or at least that’s what many recent studies on Alzheimerb s-type dementia seem to suggest. What’s the connection? Children may be more likely to develop obesity and diabetes—established risk factors for Alzheimer’s—if their parents fill their lunch bags with junk food because it’s easier than arguing with them about the virtues of eating a balanced diet!
The case for a connection between junk food and Alzheimer’s became more convincing when several studies showed that the association between diabetes and Alzheimer’s may be a fundamental aspect of this type of dementia. In other words, Alzheimer’s may be a metabolic disorder in which insulin plays a major role. Some authors have even suggested using the term “Type 3 diabetes” to refer to Alzheimer’s.
If this theory proves true, then the implications are vast. Throughout the world today, there are about 35 million people with Alzheimer’s. According to current projections, based on the rate at which the population is aging, this figure could reach 100 million by the year 2050. In the United States, the percentage of the population with Type 2 diabetes has almost tripled in the past 30 years. This form of diabetes is closely correlated with obesity, which in turn is linked with eating junk food. If Alzheimer’s turns out to be more closely linked with diabetes than was once thought, then the potential for human suffering becomes pretty frightening.
This is a perfect example of a situation where the famous “precautionary principle” should be applied not only at the personal level, but at the political level as well. It won’t do any good to just keep telling people over and over that all the fat, sugar, and salt in fast food is bad for their health. The human brain has evolved to make us enjoy these substances more than any others (in environments where they were scarce, our survival depended on it), and no well-meaning public service advertising campaign is going to overcome millions of years of evolution.
We therefore need to attack this problem on what economists call the supply side, and pass laws against the seductive advertising with which the junk food industry bombards our children. To criticize kids or their parents for consuming potato chips, soft drinks, and jumbo hamburgers is just another case of blaming the victims, who often come from impoverished backgrounds and who do not have the means to resist the propaganda that our governments allow the fast-food industry to put out. These governments should instead do their duty and worry more about the health of their people than about the health of this exploitative industry.
Alzheimer’s could be the most catastrophic impact of junk food
Testing the effect of the diabetes drug Liraglutide in Alzheimer’s disease
Malbouffe : on vous tue pour vrai
Loi contre la malbouffe
McDonald’s to workers: Don’t eat our food!
http://nypost.com/2013/12/24/mcdonalds-to-workers-dont-eat-our-food/