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DON’T hold the book too close to your eyes or you’ll need glasses, parents often warn their children. But the food kids eat might play just as big a role as books and computer screens when it comes to short-sightedness.

Diets high in refined starches such as breads and cereals increase insulin levels. This affects the development of the eyeball, making it abnormally long and causing short-sightedness, suggests a team led by Loren Cordain, an evolutionary biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and Jennie Brand Miller, a nutrition scientist at the University of Sydney. The theory could help…

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