Despite having the strongest economy in the world and one of the highest qualities of living in the world, the United States is known internationally as being home to some of the most unhealthy people on planet Earth of any major developed country.
The poor diet of so very many Americans has even earned the United States the naming rights of the standard American diet, also known as the Western pattern diet, in which people eat tons of processed and pre-packaged foods, butter, dairy, eggs, corn, sugar, potatoes, refined grains, processed meat, red meat, and – last, but certainly not least – fried foods.
Although not as popular in other countries in the Western world, the Western pattern diet is certainly more prevalent in countries such as the United Kingdom as compared to the rest of the world.
A study that was recently published in the popular academic and medical journal, the Annals of Internal Medicine, one of the most highly-regarded such journals of its kind in the world, reported that a British teenager recently lost his vision due to eating an abundance of unhealthy foods.
Although the young man hadn’t lost his sight completely, he had, in fact, been considered legally blind by the young age of 17. Researchers from the University of Bristol’s Bristol Eye Hospital and Bristol Medical School, two of the top such colleges in all of the United Kingdom, where they’re located, found that the teenager reported with a deficiency of vitamin B12, selenium, and copper. The young man also had a subpar level of vitamin D in his system.
Reports from the University of Bristol indicated that the 17-year-old was also confirmed as having far too much zinc in his system, as well as a bone density that was much lower than his peers.
The medical reason behind why the young man went blind is known as nutritional optic neuropathy, a rare condition that causes the optic nerve to not function as it’s supposed to.
People who suffer from nutritional optic neuropathy who live in any of the world’s most developed countries often get the condition as a result of having bowel issues that prevents them from absorbing nutrients from the food they eat. In less-developed countries, people who get nutritional optic neuropathy often simply don’t have access to sufficient food to eat.
The aforementioned young man, who went unnamed, reported that he primarily ate potato chips, white bread, and French fries.
