You know a fast-food diet is bad for you – but I’ll bet you can’t come close to guessing just how bad it is.
An experiment that aimed to mimic the US diet and lifestyle (and we’re fast approaching it in the UK) put volunteers to bed for a week.
Six healthy men were fed 6,000 calories a day of pizza, burgers and other junk food. It took just two days for their bodies to go haywire and show signs of serious disease.
At the start, three of the men were a normal weight, three were overweight and none were obese or unhealthy. They were all on bed rest throughout the study.
In a week, they had gained an average of 3.5kg (7.7 lb) and showed signs of insulin resistance, the forerunner of diabetes .
Half of all US adults are suffering from diabetes or are at risk of developing it in the near future (pre-diabetes). And the vast majority don’t know.