Teenage boy goes blind after eating a diet of Pringles, white bread and French fries

Health and fitness

Sep 3

Article By Mary Evans // EEW Magazine // Health

No nutrients means no eyesight for one teenage boy, an admittedly picky eater.

Eating a diet that consisted mostly of French fries, Pringles and white bread caused him to go blind, according to a medical journal.

CNN reports that scientists from the University of Bristol, who studied the case of this young patient, have warned of the dangers of a poor diet.

Aside from consuming fries from the fish-and-chip shop, Pringles potato chips and white bread, the unidentified patient said there wasn’t much else in his diet besides slices of processed ham and sausage.

This destructive pattern had begun in elementary school, as he avoided foods with certain textures. By age 14, he went to see a doctor complaining of being tired, according to the case report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Doctors say, at the time, he was not on any special medication, had a normal BMI and height, and did not have any signs of malnutrition. Doctors did, however, discover low vitamin B12 levels and anemia, so they treated the patient with vitamin B12 injections and gave him dietary advice and guidelines.

A year later, he was experiencing some loss of hearing and vision, but doctors did not know the cause.

By 17, he was blind.

In a statement from the University of Bristol, doctors say vitamin B12 deficiency, low copper and selenium levels, a high zinc level, reduced vitamin D level and bone level density were to blame. Unfortunately, in this teen’s case, the vision damage is permanent.

Researchers from Bristol Medical School and the Bristol Eye Hospital concluded that the patient suffered nutritional optic neuropathy—a dysfunction of the optic nerve.

“In developed countries it is mostly caused by bowel problems or medication that interferes with the absorption of nutrients, and it is rarely caused entirely by poor diet because food is readily available,” reports CNN.

The condition is reversible if treated early.

"This case highlights the impact of diet on visual and physical health, and the fact that calorie intake and BMI are not reliable indicators of nutritional status,” said study lead author Denize Atan, an ophthalmologist at Bristol Medical School and Bristol Eye Hospital.

The researchers say nutritional optic neuropathy could become more common due to our high junk food intake which has low nutritional value.