I read in the Mirror (I think today's) that a young lad died due to malnutrition and liver cirhosis because he only ate white bread, macdonald's chips, something else which I cant remember and occasional beans. He refused to eat anything else for years; in the 6-12 months or so before he died he also refused the liquid nourishment meals they were trying to encourage him to eat. He was also offered a liver transplant which he also refused out of fear of the surgery. For the last 6 months or so he was barely able to walk across the room and was confined to a wheelchair. His family and friends were distraught by his death but quite unable to convince h im to change his lifestyle.

i'd have made him eat something better

you have to

goes to show you cant live on just ****e

I really don't understand the mindset of people like that. I think that a lot of it is to do with the parents, and the fact that society has reached a point whereby we are forced from birth until death to consume as much expensive rubbish as possible.

How people can eat McDonald's is beyond me.

I'm sure that there must have been more to it. People in the past existed on diets of nothing more than bread or cheese (if they were lucky) or potatoes, and lived years on such food. People in some third world countries don't have diets much better than that. Yes, you would be ill, but you would not die unless you had other things wrong with you, surely? Prove me wrong!

Originally posted by Mathom
I'm sure that there must have been more to it. People in the past existed on diets of nothing more than bread or cheese (if they were lucky) or potatoes, and lived years on such food. People in some third world countries don't have diets much better than that. Yes, you would be ill, but you would not die unless you had other things wrong with you, surely? Prove me wrong!
That story sounds seriously suspect to me. It's sad that the poor lad died, but the 'newspaper' story said that he had autoimmune hepatitis, which is going to cause some pretty hefty liver cirrhosis. I know that malnutrition can also lead to liver cirhossis, but he wasn't exactly starving himself. Also, there were no comments from medics, only some bloke from a 'Optimal Nutrition' place. More to that story than the junk food angle that 'The Mirror' put on it, I think.

I saw that and was deeply saddened for his mother. The papers said she tried to get him to eat other food but you never know the whole story with these things.

I hope it serves as a warning to people, but knowing the nature of the human race...

I know of a doctor who told parents (they were friends of ours) whose baby would only eat Jaffa Cakes that that was OK because at least he was eating something.

Just goes to confirm everything I'm always banging on about, you need to eat LIVE food (like not creatures LOL!) to live well such as fruit and raw vegetables as part of your diet. Kinds goes along with JoeP's post of the other day about mental health.

Who was it who said that all good health begins in the colon? Can't remember.

Just had a look at the story, and it looks as if excessive salt could have played a part, but hepatitis does sound as if it could have caused this too.

However, before we go on at the lad's mother, it sounds as if he had an eating disorder as real as anorexia.

Originally posted by Mathom
Just had a look at the story, and it looks as if excessive salt could have played a part, but hepatitis does sound as if it could have caused this too.

However, before we go on at the lad's mother, it sounds as if he had an eating disorder as real as anorexia.
No, it definately seems that he had an eating problem. Whether that was the cause of his death, I don't know. Autoimmune hepatitis is a disease of the immune system which can lead to serious liver damage to the extent that a transplant might be required. As far as I'm aware, it has little if anything to do with what one eats.

Autoimmune hepatitis is a disease of the immune system

Genuine question: how would you catch/develop that type of illness ppn? Is it an AIDS-Type thing?

Originally posted by lizzmobile
Genuine question: how would you catch/develop that type of illness ppn? Is it an AIDS-Type thing?
Well hepatitis is just a general term for any inflammation of the liver (hep - liver, itis- inflammation), so the disase is not just associated with, for example, the hepatitis virusus (although they do, of course, cause liver disease).

Like many other autoimmune diseases, the cause of autoimmune hepatitis is, I think, still unknown. It occurs, though, when the cells of the body's immune system don't recognise the body's own cells as 'self' and treats them as foreign, ie. how they would deal with bacteria for example. The mechanisms the immune cells use to destroy the invading bacteria are turned against the liver cells, resulting in damage, and the cirrhosis described in the Mirror article.

One of the major areas of work in the study of autoimmune diseases in general is to look at genetics; specifically the genes that code for certain proteins on the immune cells and the genes that code for proteins on the 'self' cells that the immune cells fail to recognise.

Eeeyew, sounds nasty. So you can't do anything to prevent it? Sounds like the complete opposite of what the body is supposed to do. How have we mutated ourselves in this way?

Originally posted by lizzmobile
Eeeyew, sounds nasty. So you can't do anything to prevent it? Sounds like the complete opposite of what the body is supposed to do. How have we mutated ourselves in this way?
It is. Or rather, they are. I think every type of cell and tissue in the body is capable of being attacked by an autoimmune assault. It's exactly the opposite of what the body's immune system is supposed to do. I don't think it's a case of us having mutated ourselves, though, in this instance. The same processes that go wrong in autoimmune disease are the processes that the body uses to recognise what is 'self' and 'non-self'. It is the proteins involved in autoimmune mechanisms that are involved in getting the correct match for organ transplants.

As for prevention against autoimmune diseases. As the error is likely to be at the genetic level, there's little one can do.

It's also more prevalent in those with other autoimmune disorders like type 1 diabetes or ulcerative colitis, so may often be part of something going awry at a whole body level as opposed to just the liver.

Potatoes, as Mathom says sustained people for centuries, and are probably still our staple food.
But you cannot compare Macdonalds 'fries' with potatoes, not at all. Even if they were proper potato chips you could probably eat about 10 boxes of them before you had eaten one potato.
As you say this lad was ill from some ailment akin to anorexia.
These faddy food problems only seemed to start when every one started feeding babies on processed 'baby food'.
If babies were fed on proper food appropriate for them we would most likely find these problems would disappear.

Originally posted by artisan
...As you say this lad was ill from some ailment akin to anorexia.
These faddy food problems only seemed to start when every one started feeding babies on processed 'baby food'.
If babies were fed on proper food appropriate for them we would most likely find these problems would disappear.
He did appear to have some sort of problem with food, in that his diet was somewhat restricted. However, the newspaper report said that he also had autoimmune hepatitis. I don't think that was due to what he did or didn't eat.

I know it sounds awful - however I must say the parents have to shoulder some of the responsibility.

Iv got a nephew who, like most kids nowadays, doesn't need to put a vegetable in his mouth to say its disgusting and he doesn't like it. This is down to his mother letting him avoid eating balanced cooked meals and snack on anything processed.

Whilst in my supervision, he knows that stuffing his face with chocolates is an absolute no-no and will eat whatever is put infront of him. I recently bought a blender which he had a play with making his own smoothy which was quite useful - If you can involve them more in the preparation of the food they usually show more interest in it.

If there is one thing I hate its ignorance - and it seems kids nowadays incorporate it into how they approach new foods. The front page of the star tonight says that Government have now released extra funds for more nutritious meals and I sincerely hope that this is the start of a new era of healthy eating.

I know it sounds awful - however I must say the parents have to shoulder some of the responsibility.

Iv got a nephew who, like most kids nowadays, doesn't need to put a vegetable in his mouth to say its disgusting and he doesn't like it. This is down to his mother letting him avoid eating balanced cooked meals and snack on anything processed.

Whilst in my supervision, he knows that stuffing his face with chocolates is an absolute no-no and will eat whatever is put infront of him. I recently bought a blender which he had a play with making his own smoothy which was quite useful - If you can involve them more in the preparation of the food they usually show more interest in it.

If there is one thing I hate its ignorance - and it seems kids nowadays incorporate it into how they approach new foods. The front page of the star tonight says that Government have now released extra funds for more nutritious meals and I sincerely hope that this is the start of a new era of healthy eating.

Originally posted by wendygs
I read in the Mirror (I think today's) that a young lad died due to malnutrition and liver cirhosis because he only ate white bread, macdonald's chips, something else which I cant remember and occasional beans. He refused to eat anything else for years; in the 6-12 months or so before he died he also refused the liquid nourishment meals they were trying to encourage him to eat. He was also offered a liver transplant which he also refused out of fear of the surgery. For the last 6 months or so he was barely able to walk across the room and was confined to a wheelchair. His family and friends were distraught by his death but quite unable to convince h im to change his lifestyle.

Although I can understand someone dying because of these reasons. I also know that papers such as The Mirror and The Sun like to exagerate on stories like these, when they don't have enough matterial to fill their Paper.

I doubt thats all he ate! I may be wrong, but if he did then he must be unique because of his abbility to stick to a rather limited diet!

Originally posted by sufc_tom
I know it sounds awful - however I must say the parents have to shoulder some of the responsibility.


No! No!! No!!!
Thats what they want you to believe. How the hell do you blame parents, when Corporations employ Psycologists/Psychioatrists to help make adverts which aim past the parent, to the child. In doing so they create "pester power!" The kids believe the great looking adverts! And the governments are all in on it, because they've more or less taken parental power away!!!

And yes they have! Now they are trying to add a fine to bad parents; incidently, parents who have no real legal control over their unrulely NWO controlled kids!

Conspiracy? Maybe! But "Conspiracy" is a cheap way of pulling down a theory that's not only hard to "Disprove" but hard to "Prove."

People say oh yeah he/she is a conspiracy theorist because they talk about crazy things!!! But are they crazy or is it just because they are too close?:suspect:

Originally posted by Mathom
I'm sure that there must have been more to it. People in the past existed on diets of nothing more than bread or cheese (if they were lucky) or potatoes, and lived years on such food. People in some third world countries don't have diets much better than that. Yes, you would be ill, but you would not die unless you had other things wrong with you, surely? Prove me wrong!

Totally agree Mathom.

I dont think his diet helped him and will have contributed to his death however i'd be very suprised if just eating this food alone caused his death.

I blame the lads parents for not sorting this out sooner.

To leave a lad of 20 eating only toast, beans and McDonalds Fries as his normal diet I am totally not surprised that he has died.

The parents should have put their foot down and said, cut it out and made him eat better knowing the food he was eating, was causing him health problems.

It does not take a genius to figure out that eating that kind of diet, especially McD's fries every day will kill you eventually.

AND... this for me was a bonus point

The lad refused a transplant to sort him out - sorry if he refused the help then I have no patience or sympathy for the idiot, he was 20 years old- he should have had more common sense, his parents also.

Originally posted by ANGELUS
...The lad refused a transplant to sort him out - sorry if he refused the help then I have no patience or sympathy for the idiot, he was 20 years old- he should have had more common sense, his parents also.
The poor bloke also had autoimmune hepatitis, according to the original report in 'The Mirror'. This is what probably resulted in the liver cirrhosis and his ultimate death. His diet was restricted, but not such that it would prove fatal.