Too much packaged food gives children fatty livers
Sharon Kirkey, CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, September 24, 2007

A generation of children is at risk of fatty liver disease because they're eating too many of the same kinds of foods that are force-fed to geese to make foie gras, new research suggests.

Rapidly digested carbohydrates found in starchy foods, from white bread and potatoes to instant oatmeal, cause fat to accumulate in the liver, Boston researchers have found.

The mouse study suggests fast-burning carbs could be driving what is rapidly becoming a major public-health worry, says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston, and lead author of a study published in this month's issue of the journal Obesity.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, where five per cent or more of the liver cells are gorged with fat, is showing up in increasingly younger children.

In 2000, Dr. Eve Roberts, an adjunct scientist at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, reported the first child with cirrhosis of the liver caused by fatty liver disease -- a girl aged 10.

Ludwig says he is now seeing the condition in five- to seven-year olds. The youngest child reported with a fatty liver was two. The condition can lead to hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis and liver failure.

Rapidly digested carbohydrates, known as high-glycemic-index foods, increase blood sugar, which triggers an outpouring of insulin by the pancreas. After the pancreas has dealt with the blood sugar, it discharges an extra burst of insulin toward the liver. This may cause the liver to mop up more carbohydrates and store them as fat.

The worst foods? White bread, white rice, potato products including chips, prepared breakfast cereals, low-fat snacks, popcorn -- "the thousands of processed carbohydrate foods that come in packages," Ludwig says.