Scientists Find McDonald's Meal Produces Disease Producing Free Radicals!

Paresh Dandona, MD, Director of the Diabetes-Endocrinology Center of Western New York and Chief of the Division of Endocrinology at the Medical School of the State University of New York at Buffalo, showed that a small McDonald’s meal, 900 calories, resulted in inflammation and oxidative stress at a cellular, molecular level.

The markers Dr. Dandona and his team used to establish the presence of inflammation and oxidative stress are the same ones the body produces when it is seriously hurt.

“In the cells, we look at nuclear factor kB (NF-kappa B), which is the orchestrator of inflammation. When we get infections, it is NF-kappa B that gets stimulated,” he explains. “We were shocked to find that what infections do, food does, too.”

Disturbingly, the post-meal inflammatory reaction did not resolve quickly — study subjects still showed signs of inflammation five hours after eating.

Dr. Dandona’s research also found that people with obesity who already had a basic level of inflammation and oxidative stress had a worse reaction than people of normal weight when challenged with a fast-food meal. “Sure enough, they start from higher levels of inflammation, they achieve a much higher level, and the inflammation is much more prolonged.” The oxidative and inflammatory stress observed with meals probably contributes to atherosclerosis, heart attack, and stroke.

Now the good news: Some foods may protect against inflammation. Dr. Dandona and his team tested a portion of orange juice containing 300 calories against an amount of glucose containing 300 calories and found that while the glucose caused inflammation, the orange juice did not, despite the fact that it, too, is pure carbohydrate.

Their next experiment investigated what happened when subjects drank orange juice with a small McDonald’s meal. “And guess what: Orange juice neutralizes inflammation. To me, that is one of the most amazing findings in the field of nutrition today,” says Dr. Dandona. “On the one hand you have all these terrible things that cause inflammation, but if you take a certain amount of orange juice, it balances things off. That’s really remarkable.”

Part of the reason orange juice and glucose have a different impact on inflammation may be due to the nature of the type of carbohydrate: The sugar in orange juice is half fructose, and fructose is noninflammatory. But what would cause it to be anti-inflammatory? “The secret is probably in agents called flavonoids, which are what gives orange juice its yellow color,” says Dr. Dandona. “And two major flavonoids are hesperetin and naringenin, which have shown in the test tube to suppress free-radical formation and to be anti-inflammatory. Chances are that the secret is in these flavonoids.”



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Bill's Comments
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Wow! What a Bombshell! Why haven't we heard about this before? The doctor's work also showed that consuming fat, the other major component of a McDonald's meal, also produced free radicals.

Dr Dandona's research also showed that antioxidants in food, such as the flavonoids in the orange juice, can and do protect the body against free radical damage.

Want to avoid illness and disease? Eat an Alkaline Diet which is rich in antioxidants! Get Delicious Alkaline Diet Recipes here:
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Bill Young, Nutritional Therapy Coach
646-961-3818