High fat meals can take your breath away

If someone cooked you an exceptionally good meal, you might tell them that it ‘took your breath away’. But now researchers from the University of Newcastle, in Australia, have discovered that a high-fat meal can literally do just that. They discovered that dining on excessively fatty dishes can inflame your airwaves. For asthmatics it can actually prevent treatments from working.

It is unclear exactly why, and how, fat has this effect on breathing. The researchers called the result “unexpected,” and said: “If these results can be confirmed by further research, this suggests that strategies aimed at reducing dietary fat intake may be useful in managing asthma."

It has already been well established that obesity has an impact on your respiratory system; it puts your lungs under strain, as it does to your heart. In 2009, a French study of 120,000 people found a strong link between increased waist size and decreased respiratory function.

Lung problems are just one of the multiple illnesses that you can encounter as a result of becoming obese. Cardiovascular disease is another; it kills around 17 million people every year, and is mostly caused by obesity. Diabetes, some cancers and musculoskeletal disorders can also result.

Global rises in obesity are attributable to two major factors. The first of these is a worldwide shift towards eating high-energy, high-fat, sugary and salty foods that lack vitamins and minerals. The second is the fact that we are increasingly sedentary in our lifestyles – working in offices rather than out in the fields, as our ancestors would have done. Increasing car ownership, and increasing urbanisation, are both partly to blame as well.