Consequences of poor diet are real

[LPPT]

Teen goes ‘blind’ from 7-year diet of french fries, white bread and ham slices, doctors say

 

This is an extreme case. I have known some picky eaters that I have health concerns for. I think that as a whole we are less concerned about the effects of bad diets because we have never seen the results of malnutrition up close. We have so many foods available to us now we don't take it seriously. I have said many times we need to have comprehensive nutrition curriculum starting as early as first grade. I have known many children that simply don't have tools to eat properly and stay healthy.

 

An extreme case of “fussy eating” caused blindness in a United Kingdom teenager, according to a report published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

When Denize Atan, the study’s lead author, met the 17-year-old boy at Bristol Eye Hospital, his eyesight had been deteriorating for two years. But what shocked her most was “how long the patient’s eating behaviour had persisted,” Atan wrote in an email Tuesday to The Washington Post. “By the time I first met him, he had followed the same diet for [approximately seven] years.”

By 15, the boy’s hearing began failing, and then the vision complications arrived. Doctors could not determine what was causing either symptom.

After two years of progressive vision loss, the boy was declared legally blind. Additional testing uncovered that his vitamin B12 deficiency had not waned. He had also developed a reduced bone mineral density level, and had high levels of zinc and low levels of copper, selenium and vitamin D.