The fast food it is sometimes the solution to a busy day or an excuse to get together with friends. The risks of consuming this type of product were already known and that it was associated, for example, with obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, nutritional deficiencies and depression. Now, it is also known that it can cause diseases that affect the liver.
According to a study published in the journal ‘Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology’, the consumption of junk food is related to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
This pathology is characterized by excess fat stored in the liver cells and can progress until cirrhosis or liver failure occurs.
The study indicates that people who are obese or diabetic and who consume at least 20% of your daily calories in the so-called ‘fast food’ have very high levels of fat in the liver compared to those who consume less of these products.
However, not only this part of the population has risks associated with the consumption of fast food. Scientists warn that the general population also presents increases in fat in the liver when a fifth or more of your diet comes from fast food.
“If a person eats one meal a day at a fast food restaurant, they might consider it not harmful. However, if it accounts for a fifth of the daily calories, the liver would be at risk,” says the research.
“Particularly alarming” data
“Healthy livers contain a small amount of fatusually less than 5%, even a slight increase in that amount can trigger non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,” explains Ani Kardashian, a Keck Medicine hepatologist and lead author of the study.
For the hepatologist The data from this study are “particularly alarming” and he adds that these causes probably lead to an increased susceptibility to accumulation of fat.
In Spain, according to 2020 data from the Spanish Society of Digestive Pathology, non-alcoholic fatty liver affects 9.5 million people, which represents around 20% of the adult population. On the other hand, in Spain 16% of the adult population suffers from obesity, according to the 2020 European Health Survey.