Weight Maven

Well, it was Friday’s, but I’m just getting around to blogging about it. Anyways, it looks like some researchers at the University of Missouri–Kansas City decided to look at fast food consumption just prior to and six months after a heart attack.

So how did the media report this? As “Many stick with fast food after heart attack.” Here’s the lede from the Reuters article:

You might think that people who’ve had a heart attack might cut back on fast food, which usually has unhealthy amounts of fat and salt.

And in fact, some heart attack patients who are frequent fast food eaters do cut back, researchers found in a new study. But 6 months later, more than half of them can still be found at their favorite fast food places at least once a week.

“You might think that” because of course you’d think that all these people had heart attacks because of all the fast food they ate and because of course if you had a heart attack then you’d somehow start channeling Michael Pollan and eating food, mostly plants, and not too much.

Snark aside, I found the following nuggets from the study curious:

• The study’s definition for “frequent” fast food consumption was “weekly or more often.” Once a week would qualify as frequent? Hmmm.
• Nearly two-thirds of those who’d just had a heart attack (the study subjects) said they ate fast food infrequently (“less than weekly”). Very interesting. I’d love to see food logs for these “infrequent” fast food eaters (I’m biased, but I think we need to focus less on “fast food” and more on “processed food.”)

That 503 of the 884 “frequent” fast food eaters were still “frequent” fast food eaters six months after their heart attack is far less of a surprise to me. But more on that in my next post on food & addiction.