Children who eat fast food several times a week appeared to heighten their risk of developing asthma and eczema, a new study shows.
Researchers at New Zealand's University of Auckland found a 39 percent increased chance of severe asthma in teenagers who ate three or more servings of fast food per week.
The research analyzed dietary patterns in over 500,000 children from all over the globe and the results were two-fold. Not only did the results show that eating fast food increased a child's likeliness of developing these allergy-related conditions but it also showed that eating plenty of fresh fruit decreased the likeliness and acted as a protective barrier against these types of illnesses in children
Younger children who ate a similar amount had a 27 percent increased risk of developing respiratory problems, according to the study, which was published Monday in British medical journal Thorax.
"What's clear from this study as that fruits and vegetables turned up as protective factors and fast foods turned up as risk factors," Gabriele Nagel, a senior researcher at the Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry at Ulm University in Germany, told Bloomberg news.
"Our study provides evidence toward giving dietary recommendations in order to prevent asthma and allergies in childhood."
The kids who ate the most fruit, on the other hand, lowered their risk. Children who ate three or more servings of fruit a week - far below the two to three servings a day that experts recommend eating - were 11 to 14 percent less likely to have severe symptoms.
The data came from developed countries including Canada as well as developing countries such as Nigeria and Brazil.
Our results suggest that fast food consumption may be contributing to the increasing prevalence of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema in adolescents and children," the researchers, Innes Asher of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Hywel Williams of the Centre for Evidence Based Dermatology at Britain's University of Nottingham, wrote.
If cause and effect are proved, they said, "then the findings have major public health significance owing to the rising consumption of fast foods globally."
