Fat-rich 'cafeteria diets' setting Canada's youth up for premature strokes, researchers warn

Fat- and calorie-rich junk-food diets are leading to typically middle-age diseases in children and setting them up for potential strokes when they're in their 30s and 40s, Canadian researchers are warning. What's more, the ongoing research suggests junk-food diets may alter the brain's anatomy, prematurely aging and damaging the network of blood vessels that supply it with oxygen. "If you go into any children's hospital in Canada today, and you ask, 'What’s going on with our young children?' they'll tell you that a lot of the kids they're seeing now are diabetic, they're hypertensive, they have altered lipids (blood fats)," said Dr. Dale Corbett, scientific director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery and professor of neurosciences at the University of Ottawa. "This used to happen in middle age and now it's happening in very young people. It's really a ticking time bomb." Close to one-third of children ages five to 17 - 1.6 million youth in Canada - are overweight or obese, according to a recent report from Statistics Canada