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Fast food joints raise stroke risk

25 February 2009

PEOPLE who live in areas with many fast food restaurants are more likely to have a stroke than those living on healthier streets.

So say Lewis Morgenstern of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and colleagues. They divided Nueces county, Texas, into 64 areas of roughly equal population and found that between 2000 and mid-2003, there were 13 per cent more strokes in areas with an average of 33 fast food restaurants than in those with just 12 fast food joints. Accounting for factors such as socio-economic status, they calculate that each additional restaurant ups the risk of…

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