Breakfast sandwiches constrict blood flow within hours of eating: study

Talk about fast food - eat just one of those popular restaurant breakfast sandwiches and your body will be feeling the effects before noon. New research shows that just two hours after eating the combination of butter, bun, eggs, bacon, cheese and salt (containing a total of 900 calories and 50 g of fat) blood flow through the arms of a test group decreased by 15 to 20 per cent. Dr. Todd Anderson, Heart and Stroke Foundation researcher and speaking at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Toronto, said it's uncertain exactly why the blood flow is temporarily impeded but that it's obvious "the body isn't happy" with what it's ingesting. He said it can be a number of reasons, including an excess of oxygen free radicals (created by the sandwich) that affect the blood vessels. "But the real question is: what's this doing to blood vessels over a period of time?" says Anderson, who is also the director of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta and head of cardiac science at the University of Calgary. "We already know what too much fat intake does to one's health, but now we should consider this." Anderson described research out of his lab, led by Vincent Lee, where a group of non-smoking students were studied twice - once on a day they had no breakfast, once on a day after consuming two "commercially available" breakfast sandwiches. The objective: assess the acute effects of just one high-fat meal on microvascular function - an indicator of overall vascular (blood vessel) health. The measurement used is called the VTI (velocity time integral) and is taken using Doppler ultrasound