Junk Food Alters The Immune System

German Scientists have found that fastfood diets boost inflammation in the body and over time, change genes and the immune system while boosting the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions.

According to a study published in the journal ‘Cell’, the impact of fast food diets are long lasting, such that even switching to a healthy diet afterwards may not fully reverse the damage once initially triggered.

The University of Bonn research conducted by scientists from Germany, the Netherlands, the United States (U.S), and Norway, found that the same process is triggered by an unhealthy diet, unleashing a cascade of biological effects that lead to chronic disease.

Similarly, they found that the immune system responds to a fast food-style Western diet the same way as it would react to a bacterial or viral infection, the ‘newsmaxHealth’ reported. In addition, the study suggests that fast foods stimulate an acute inflammatory response and alter genes responsible for the proliferation of immune cells in the body that have been found to have a sort of memory. Fast food is a mass-produced food that is prepared and served very quickly.

The food is typically less nutritionally valuable, compared to other foods and dishes. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a packaged form for take-out/take-away.

Researcher Dr. Eicke Latz, director of the Institute for Innate Immunity of the University of Bonn, said that the foundations of a healthy diet needed to become a much more prominent part of education than they are at present.

He added:“Only in this way can we immunise children at an early stage against the temptations of the food industry. “Children have a choice of what they eat every day.

We should enable them to make conscious decisions regarding their dietary habits.” The researchers tracked mice fed an unhealthy diet — high in saturated fats, sugar and salt, while mostly devoid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and fibre.

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