EAT A HAMBURGER A WEEK AND INVITE AS....

Truly Bizarre Risk From Eating Hamburgers

Parents, beware! Children who eat hamburgers just once a week are twice as likely to develop asthma and wheezing problems, Foodconsumer.org reports of a new study from New Zealand.

Specifically, kids who eat one hamburger a week are 75 percent more likely to have asthma and 100 percent more likely to have wheezing problems.

It's not just hamburgers. Many foods you might purchase at a fast-food restaurant, including soda pop, were found to increase the risk of asthma, according to the researchers at the Wellington Asthma Research Group based at the Wellington Medical School in New Zealand.

The conclusions were drawn from the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Chldhood, a research project that involved 1,321 children between the ages of 10 and 12. Diet and asthma symptoms were recorded.

The results are surprising: Compared with children who never ate hamburgers, those who ate them frequently had a much higher risk of experiencing asthma symptoms. The more hamburgers a child ate, the higher the incidence of asthma.

Why hamburgers? It could be the high salt content that boosts the risk of asthma, according to study leader Dr. Kristen Wickens. Asthma has long been suspected to be the result of the high-fat western diet, higher standard of living and decreased physical activity.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2003 asthma in the United States caused:

* 12.7 million doctor visits
* 1.2 million hospital outpatient visits
* 1.9 million emergency department visits
* 484,000 hospitalizations
* 4,261 deaths

The study findings were published in the journal Allergy.