Fast food gets blame in asthma study

LONDON - Fast food and ready-made packaged meals may be causing the alarming rise in the world's childhood asthma rates.

Scottish researchers have found that children who have diets low in vegetables, vitamins and minerals are three times more likely to suffer from wheezing, infections and other asthmatic symptoms than youngsters who eat less processed or frozen food.

In Britain, the number of children developing asthma before the age of 5 has doubled in less than a decade. One in seven children suffers from asthma, some 1.5 million youngsters.

And New Zealand is the second-wheeziest nation next to Britain.

The disease had been associated with prosperous urban lifestyles, rising pollution levels, more carpeting and central heating, increasing children's contact with dust mites.

Although doctors suspected diet might also play a role in the rising levels of asthma, the research, in the journal Thorax, showed that children who had the lowest intake of vegetables and vitamin E were at much greater risk.

The study, led by Professor Anthony Seaton, of the environmental and occupational medicine department at Aberdeen University, was done in Saudi Arabia, where modern and traditional communities live side by side.

Over the past 30 years, as Saudis have become more prosperous because of the oil boom, their diet has become more Westernised.

The researchers found a big difference in the diet of children from the "Westernised" capital Jeddah, and those in rural villages. They compared the diets of more than 300 children aged 12, a third of whom had asthmatic symptoms.

After taking family history and allergic tendencies into consideration, they found that eating at fast-food outlets was a significant risk factor for wheezing.

Children with the lowest consumption of fresh produce, fibre, vitamin E and essential minerals were much more likely to suffer from a wheezy illness. A lack of vitamin E on its own trebled the risk.

Professor Seaton said the traditional Saudi diet bore little superficial resemblance to the average Western fare. In rural communities, Saudis still ate a diet based on cows' and goats' milk, rice, vegetables, lamb, chicken, dates and local fruits.

"With increasing prosperity and commercial exposure, there has been an influx over some three decades of Western-type frozen and prepared foods in supermarkets and restaurants," he said.

"This study suggests that dietary factors during childhood are an important influence in determining the expression of wheezy illness.:

Dr Martyn Partridge, the chief medical adviser for the National Asthma Campaign, said: "This is an interesting finding and one consistent with other studies that suggest taking fresh fruit and a balanced diet protects against asthma and some other lung diseases.

"It is another point towards lifestyle as the cause of the increasing asthma."

- INDEPENDENT