Last month a study was published about fried food consumption and the risk of coronary artery disease. The study was conducted with US military veterans and concluded that: “In a large national cohort of U.S. Veterans, fried food consumption has a positive, dose-dependent association with CAD.” Meaning that the more fried food a veteran consumed, the more likely they were to have heart disease. But what does this mean for the average person?
It’s important to note that the vast majority of study participants were men (90%) and the average age was 64. It’s well known that heart disease in women is poorly researched and important to acknowledge that the results of this study don’t necessarily apply to women. There are also many factors that contribute to the risk of developing heart disease and the researchers took the following into account: race (insofar as to categorize participants as black, white, or other), BMI, alcohol use, education status, exercise, smoking status, pre-existing type 2 diabetes, consumption of fish, fruit, and vegetables. After controlling for these factors, the researchers still found a relationship between fried food consumption and CAD.
However, the authors neglected to control for one important factor: poverty. Poverty is a significant risk factor for many so-called “lifestyle-related diseases”, including CAD. Other lifestyle factors are often also enmeshed with poverty making it nearly impossible to determine true contributing factors. People who live in poverty often have poorer diet quality than those with higher incomes and may rely on fast food, including fried foods. If poverty is indeed a greater risk factor than fried food consumption, or if fried food consumption is a result of poverty, this means that simply telling people to consume less fried food may not be the most helpful advice. It takes a certain level of privilege to be able to “choose” to consume the recommended diet. It means having the financial means, time, access, and facilities necessary to prepare nutritious meals.
While the findings of this study support the common belief that fried food is not a healthy choice they also serve to entrench the belief that diet is all about choice when for many people it is not. We need to look further than fried food to determine the root causes of illnesses such as coronary artery disease if we truly want to work to reduce incidence of these diseases.
