If you’re an older women (post menopausal), you might want to avoid Fried Chicken and Fried Fish. A new data mining project by U.S. researchers has revealed that frequent consumption of those foods can increase your risk of early death from heart disease…
Older women who eat with others, in socially active circumstances,
tend to have better diets and stronger constitutions
than those who eat alone.
What they did…
Researchers scanned the results of more than 166,000 women aged 50 to 79 who participated in the U.S. Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) between 1993-1998, and who were followed up to February 2017.
The researchers looked at the women’s 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. During this time, 31,588 deaths occurred, including 9,320 from heart-related [causes], 8,358 from cancer and 13,880 from other causes.”
What they found…
After taking into account social and cultural differences min subjects’ diets, researchers determined that, “regularly eating fried foods was associated with a heightened risk of death from any cause and, specifically, heart-related death: those who ate one or more servings a day had an 8% higher risk compared with those who did not eat fried food. One or more servings of Fried Chicken a day was linked to a 13% higher risk of death from any cause and a 12% higher risk of heart-related death compared with no fried food.”
The good news? The data showed no connection between eating fried foods and contracting cancer.
The takeaway…
Okay. Dr. Obvious, looking over my shoulder as I write, notes that the study also showed: “Women who ate fried foods more regularly tended to be younger [and] non-white, with less education and a lower income. They were also more likely to be smokers, exercise less and have a lower quality diet.” So, we shouldn’t allot all the blame for the increased death rate in the study demographic to eating Fatty Fried Foods alone. But there’s definitely a connection and those other factors just increase the likelihood that any older woman matching the profile will die earlier than she otherwise would.
My take…
It’s obvious that, if you abuse your body with smoking, lethargy and a crappy diet, you’re going to burn it out sooner than people who take better care of themselves. What did surprise me was that no link was found between eating fried foods and early death from cancer.
And, about the specific findings concerning the amount of fried food that folks had to consume to increase their risk of heart disease, I want to underline some numbers. Lest we forget: “[R]egularly eating fried foods,” was defined by the researchers as, “One or more servings of Fried Chicken a day […] compared with no fried food.”
Who eats a serving (or more) of fried foods every day? Maybe teenagers, or people who work at Fast Food joints. But women aged 50 to 75? It’s been shown that older folks tend to lapse into less-healthy diets out of convenience and a lack of motivation to cook. And they probably exercise less than those young 50-year-old whippersnappers for whom arthritis is a scourge still to come. They’re less likely to be smokers, according to recent studies about that health ‘variable’, but may well have lower or fixed incomes, or pensions that don’t keep up with inflation.
Maybe… Just maybe, older women are at greater risk for early death from heart disease as a result of some of the social and economic factors the study identified than they are from simply eating too much fried food…
~ Maggie J.