Eating junk food three or more times a week may lead to asthma, eczema, and serious allergies in kids, a gigantic study has revealed.
The research project involving more than 319,000 kids from 51 countries found that teens who ate fast food such as burgers and chicken nuggets three times or more a week were 39 percent more likely to have severe asthma. Younger kids who ate fast food three times or more a week were 27 percent more likely to get severe asthma. Both were also more likely to have allergic rhinitis, characterized by one or several of the following symptoms: nasal congestion, runny nose, post-nasal drip, sneezing, red eyes, and itching of the nose or eyes.
However, the kids who ate three weekly portions of fruit and vegetables lowered the risk of asthma or any severe allergic symptom by 11 percent among the teens and14 percent in the younger group.
All the participants were also involved in the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, which is a collaborative project with about 2 million children from 100 countries. The researchers reported in the study, "A consistent pattern for the adolescent group was found for the relationship between symptoms and fast foods.”
“What surprised me in this study was that the findings are remarkably consistent when it comes to looking at specific regions of the world and within the different levels of affluence and sex,” Hywel Williams of the Centre for Evidence Based Dermatology at Britain’s University of Nottingham said to Health on Today.
