Do ‘takeaways’ contribute to Type 2 diabetes?

On Dec 7th, K J Smith, L Blizzard, S A McNaughton, S L Gall, T Dwyer and A J Venn published the academic paper, ‘Takeaway food consumption and cardio-metabolic risk factors in young adults’. This paper outlined a study which reported that eating takeaway meals twice a week or more increased a person’s chances of becoming insulin-resistant, and in turn their chances of developing type-two diabetes.

They took a sample of 1,896 people aged 26-36, and surveyed them on their eating habits in regard to takeaway food, their physical activity and to what extent they were a ‘couch potato’. It also measured their waistline and blood pressure.

They primarily divided participants into two groups- those who ate takeaway food once a week or less, and those who ate it twice a week or more; within this, they then categorised results on account of age, employment status, and again, the amount of physical activity the person generally undertook.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report indicates that the people who ate takeaway food twice a week or more had higher blood sugar and insulin levels than those who ate it once a week or less. It did note that women seemed more susceptible to the unhealthy effects of takeaway food than men, although of course it still had a negative impact on the health of male participants as well.

Looking at some reader comments discussing the article, some people are clearly critical of this study; some argue that it is basically common sense that eating a greater amount of unhealthy food makes you more prone to diabetes, whereas others argue that, whilst the study took several external factors into account, it failed to account for their other eating habits. After all, just because a meal isn’t ‘takeaway’ in no way means that it’s healthy, either! There are all manner of other foods that can still constitute an ‘unhealthy diet’.

Is it takeaway food specifically that makes people more prone to diabetes, or is it the fact that it’s unhealthy food? As stated above, you could quite easily argue that this study gives no real new, useful information. Yes, unhealthy food is bad for you- that’s why we call it ‘unhealthy’. Logic would therefore dictate that the more of it we eat, the more likely we are to become unhealthy ourselves and again, if you make the connection between takeaway food being unhealthy, it’s really quite questionable as to whether anything in this article can really be called revolutionary or even surprising.

What do you think about this article and this study? Feel free to leave any comments in the comment box. :)