Editor's Choice | This Week in BMJ | Press releases
BMJ No 7105 Volume 315 Papers Saturday 16 August 1997
Age related dietary exposure to meat products from British dietary surveys of teenagers and adults in the 1980s and 1990sSheila M Gore, Sheila Bingham, Nicholas E Day
Nineteen cases of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease have been diagnosed in the United Kingdom and one in
France.(1) Compared with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,
the new variant is characterised by different neuropathology,
methionine homozygosity, young age, and a longer interval from onset of
clinical symptoms to death.(2) Importantly, the molecular
marker for bovine spongiform encephalopathy is present in people with
new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which makes dietary ex Because of the younger age at onset of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease age trends in the consumption of meat products that are likely
to have contained mechanically recovered meat are relevant. We reviewed
British dietary surveys of teenagers and adults conducted in the 1980s
and 1990s to identify whether consumption of certain foods - in
particular, those likely to contain mechanically recovered meat - is
strongly related to age. The dietary and nutrition survey of British adults recruited a
nationally representative sample of adults aged 16 to 64 living in
private households in October 1986 to August 1987.(4) A
seven day weighed dietary record was obtained from 2,197 people, 70% of
those eligible to take part. Table 1 shows by age group the percentage
who ate certain foods and the mean quantity consumed by them during the
seven day recording period. Each age group relates to roughly 400
respondents.
There was a striking age gradient in the percentage who ate burgers and
kebabs, from 45% of those aged 16-24 to only 13% of those aged 50-64.
The quantities consumed by those who ate these products also decreased
noticeably with age (standard errors were not reported, however).
Consumption of meat pies and pastries was also higher in the youngest
age group, but the age gradient in consumption of other meat products
points, if anything, to higher consumption at older ages.
The European prospective investigation of cancer (EPIC), a major
collaborative study of diet in relation to cancer incidence and other
end points, has an East Anglian component. By mid-1996, 19,000 men and
women in Norfolk aged 45-74 had been recruited (42% of those invited).
The food frequency questionnaire to assess initial dietary habits asked
for information about participants' average consumption of different
meats and meat products in the previous year. Table 1 shows the
percentage in each age group who, on average, consumed certain meats
once a week or more. Each age group is represented by over 4,000
respondents; response rate did not differ by age group.
Other representative surveys, whose details are available from us, have
published little information on age related consumption of particular
meat products.(5) Data from the two surveys in the mid-1980s and the 1990s show
strikingly that consumption of beefburgers declines with age. The
reported percentages of people eating burgers were similar in the two
studies, but consumption of sausages and beef was higher in the 1990s
by the Norfolk participants.
Other age related trends, or the lack of them, in the consumption of
meat products containing mechanically recovered meat may be discernible
from the detailed records of food intake kept by participants in
prospective dietary studies. Improved categorisation of the data - for
example, to differentiate pork from steak and kidney pies and types of
sausage and burger - would be needed. If additional analyses of other
surveys by age group could be encouraged a brief workshop might be
convened to pool the findings.
Acknowledgement: Ailsa A Welch, Robert N Luben, and Suzy F Oakes, who provided the EPIC data.
MRC Biostatistics Unit, MRC Dunn Clinical Nutrition
Centre,
Correspondence to: Dr Gore
(sheila.gore@mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk).
References
1 Council of the Royal Society. Update on
BSE. London: Royal Society, 1997:1-8.
2 Will R G, Ironside J W, Zeidler M, Cousens S N, Estibeiro K,
Alperovitch A, et al. A new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the
UK. Lancet 1996;347:921-5.
3 Collinge J, Sidle K C L, Meads J, Ironside J, Hill A F. Molecular
analysis of prion strain variation and the aetiology of "new
variant" CJD. Nature 1996;383:685-90.
4 Gregory J, Foster K, Tyler H, Wiseman M. The dietary
and nutritional s
5 Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Fifty
years of the national food survey. London: HMSO, 1991.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||