Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Ice Cream Kills

This was the absolute worst news that I have ever come across. Today I was streaming through health headlines while searching BBC news and I stumbled across an article posted six hours ago that talks about how older people who eat healthy diets 'lead longer lives'. The research that was found was done by the Journal of the American Dietic Association. They found that those who ate a low-fat diet that consisted mainly of fruit and veggies lowered thier risk of dying by approximently 10 whole years. This particular study consisted of 2,500 adults  between 70 and 79 years of age. And here is the real kicker, those who ate a higher fat diet that consisted mainly of ice cream, cheese and whole milk had the highest risk of death.

The study was broken down into six different groups. This groups were based off of how often these individuals ate certain foods. The groups were broken up accordingly; 1.) healthy foods; 2.) high-fat dairy products; 3.) meat; 4.) fried-foods and alcohol; 5.) breakfast cereal; 6.) refined grains and sweets and desserts.

Some of the stats found were as follows; The high fat dairy product group consisted of 332 people. Of these 332 people 109 of them died over a 10 year period. That would be 34 percent of the group studied. Those in the "sweets and desserts" group consisted of 339 people and of the 339 people 104 of them died over a 10 year period, which comes to 32 percent. Those who were in the healthy food group consisted of 374 people and after 10 years only 77 of them had died. That means that only 21 percent of those studied in the healthy food group died as opposed to the 34 percent from the high-fat dairy group. There were no significant differences found in death rates in those who were healthy food eaters, breakfast cereal eaters and refined grains eaters. The biggest difference was the ice cream eaters. This is a really sad fact!

The people considered to have a healthy diet ate much more low-fat dairy, fruit, whole grains, poultry, fish and veggies. These people also tended to have better lifestyle choices too, which means that as a whole they smoked less and were more active. Another thing about this group is that they ate less meat, fried foods, sweets, high calorie drinks and added fats. 

A British dietician named Lucy Jones, spokesperson for the British Dietic Association, claims that trans fatty acid and saturated fats were the common factor for those that were considered higher risk for death.

So basically what I took from this article was that if I wanted to live longer than I would have to eat less high-fat dairy. The thing that really shocked me is that the high-fat dairy eaters were at a higher risk of death than those who consumed fried foods. In my head I have always considered fried foods to be the worst of the worst, but apparently they aren't. Don't get me wrong, they obviously are bad for you and shouldn't be consumed in large ammounts (which sucks for those of us who are from the south and that's the way that food is prepared). But it had never really dawned on me about milk, cheese or ice cream. Something to think about I suppose. If you have anything to add let me know. What did you think about this study?

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