Fast-food diet cancels out benefits of breastfeeding in preventing asthma: U of A researcher
January 27, 2009 - Edmonton-A newly published study led by a University of Alberta professor has found that eating fast food more than once or twice a week negated the beneficial effects that breastfeeding has in protecting children from respiratory disease.
The article appears online in the international journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy. A number of different findings-including links between fast food and asthma, breastfeeding and asthma, and all three together-led the researchers to their conclusion.
The team looked at about 700 Manitoba children, about 250 of whom had asthma and 475 did not. The researchers did not follow the children from birth as in a cohort study, but used a questionnaire to gather their data when the children were seen, between the ages of eight to 10.
Senior author, Anita Kozyrskyj, an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics in the U of A's Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, noted that nutrition is only one of many factors involved in asthma. "But this is an interesting finding, and we hope it will stimulate other researchers to follow up and investigate this in more depth, perhaps with a cohort study.
"Fast food has many negative consequences on the health of children and it remains to be confirmed whether asthma is one of them. Our results will prompt researchers to ask this question," she said.
"Like other studies, we found that fast-food consumption was associated with asthma," said Kozyrsky.
The research also confirmed the findings of many other studies about the benefits of breastfeeding in relation to asthma. Kozyrskyj found that breastfeeding for too short a time was linked to a higher risk of asthma and that children exclusively breastfed 12 weeks or longer as infants had a lower risk.
"But this beneficial effect was only seen in children who did not consume fast food, or only occasionally had fast food," she added.
The children who had been breastfed for less than three months and also ate lots of fast food had the highest risk of all. These children "had a greater than two-fold risk of asthma, compared to infants who had been exclusively breastfed for a longer time period and who did not become high consumers of fast food in later childhood," the study says.
More than half the children studied ate fast food more than twice a week.
Other research has also shown how pervasive fast food has become in the diets of many children. A 2005 study by University of Alberta public-health professor Paul Veugelers, of about 4,300 Grade 5 students in Nova Scotia, showed that four out 10 ate fast food at least once a week. And a 2002 American study showed the consumption of fast food in children had increased from two per cent of their total diet in the late 1970s to 10 per cent in the 1990s.
Kozyrskyj's team suggests this fast-food connection may explain why asthma rates keep rising, even though more mothers are breastfeeding. While her group did not look at why fast food might cause asthma, the authors suggest the high fat content and high salt levels, which can increase twitchy airways and wheezing, may be to blame.
Kozyrskyj, an authority in the area of child health and asthma research, was recruited to the University of Alberta from the University of Manitoba to assume the position of Research Chair, Maternal-Child Health and the Environment.
She conducted the study with Allan Becker while at the University of Manitoba.
Kozyrskyj was a co-author in a different study that received widespread publicity last year when the researchers reported children who received antibiotics in the first year of life were at higher risk of developing asthma later on.
Other research by Kozyrskyj, published in the journal Allergy last year, suggested that girls who do not drink enough milk and are overweight may be at greater risk for asthma.
Lionel Dibden, acting chair of the U of A's Department of Pediatrics, says Kozyrskyj is a welcome addition who will help expand the department's research capacity.
"She brings a skill set that complements our efforts to better understand population-based influences on the health of children through database analysis," Dibden said. "She will help develop our relationship with the School of Public Health by teaching courses in the school and collaborating with their faculty."
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