[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Many studies have shown that eating fried food regularly can lead to unwanted health issues.
In a research on woman over the age of 50 years from the United States, investigators from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA have found that overindulging in fried foods can increase a person’s risk of death from multiple causes.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, suggests that reducing consumption of fried foods, especially fried chicken and fried fish/shellfish, could have a positive impact on public health.
Researchers said that, up to a third of North American adults eat fast-food every day, and previous studies have suggested that a greater intake of fried food is associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The US researchers investigated the association of eating fried food with death from any cause, and in particular heart and cancer-related death.
They used questionnaire data to assess the diets of 106,966 women, aged 50 to 79, who enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) between 1993-1998 and who were followed up to February 2017.
During this time, 31,588 deaths occurred, including 9,320 heart-related deaths 8,358 cancer deaths and 13,880 from other causes.
“We know fried food consumption is something very common in the United States and also around the world. Unfortunately, we know very little about long-term health effect of fried food consumption,” Wei Bao, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa and the lead author of the study, told CNN.
The researchers looked at the women’s total and specific consumption of different fried foods, including: “fried chicken”; “fried fish, fish sandwich and fried shellfish (shrimp and oysters)”; and other fried foods, such as french fries, tortilla chips and tacos.
After accounting for lifestyle, diet quality, education level, and income, the results showed that regularly eating fried food was linked to an increased risk of death. Specifically, those who ate one or more servings of fried food a day had an 8% higher risk than those who didn’t touch it.
Eating fried chicken daily was associated with a 13% higher risk of death and a 12% higher risk of death from a heart-related problem, compared to no fried food. Eating fried fish daily was linked with a 7% higher risk of death.
However, the researchers found no evidence that eating fried food was associated with cancer-related death.
This is an observational study which only considers women in the US, so may not be applicable more widely, the researchers said.
The presence of “unidentified confounders is still possible”, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause, they said.
However, they highlight the large size and diversity of the study sample, and say that “we have identified a risk factor for cardiovascular mortality that is readily modifiable by lifestyle.”
“Reducing the consumption of fried foods, especially fried chicken and fried fish/shellfish, may have clinically meaningful impact across the public health spectrum,” the researchers said.
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