Make smart financial decisions with DailyFinance

Heart disease, diabetes more prevalent with western diet

Posted: Jan 23rd 2008 7:36PM by Brian White
Filed under: Diet and Weight Loss

Who doesn't love a cheeseburger, Philly cheese steak or a slice of pizza ala Windy City? A new study shows that engaging in the typical western-style diet -- that is, pizza, burgers, sodas and fried foods -- can lead to a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Although this is something many of us have heard before, the findings should remind us of something: over and over again, subjecting oneself to a strict western diet all the time can have dire health consequences. Even China, which is seeing more of its population eating a western-style diet, is seeing negative health effects.

Dr. Lyn Steffen indicated that eating two hamburger patties and one diet soda per day can "substantially" boost one's risk of developing metabolic syndrome. This happens when three of the following five factors are present: a large waistline, elevated blood pressure, elevated fasting blood sugar, elevated fasting triglycerides, or reduced levels of good (HDL) cholesterol.

Although dumping burgers, fries, pizza, soda and fried foods in general would be impossible for some, limiting your intake of them would be a prudent idea based on this new research -- and the multitude of related stories before it.

Related Headlines

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.

New Users

Current Users



That's Fit Features



How many calories burned? What is my BMI?
More weight loss tools!


Daily Fit Tip

Many of us can't run five days a week. At least not forever, especially after injury creep sets in ...

 

Featured Stories

Sponsored Links

Most Commented On (60 days)

Recent Comments


Sites We Love

Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in: