VANCOUVER – Research scientists at the University of British Columbia have published a ground-breaking study that suggests that individuals whose diet is mostly made up of food have an incredibly high mortality rate.
“Before this research, people would point to red meat, cholesterol, alcohol, transfats, carbs, salt and any number of other things as risk factors in our diets,” said Dr. Mildred Sandford, team lead on the group, “But as it turns out, it was the simple act of eating food that’s driving us all to an early grave.”
Researchers noted that the type, amount, and relative nutritional value of foods seemed to have little effect on the ultimate outcome. “It doesn’t matter if subjects ate broccoli, Twinkies, or raw lard – every diet we researched seems to result in death.”
The research team commenced the study after noticing that the only commonality among instances of death across large swaths of ethnic, racial, cultural, geographic, and age groups was that they all ate food. To further explore the idea, the team assembled sample groups across Canada and asked them to stick to an exclusively food-based diet. While only about 25% of participants died over the following five years, those who did had strictly maintained the consumption of food.
“It’s quite astounding to know that the thing that’s killing us is everything,” said Dr. Sandford. “While we don’t quite know what it is specifically about food that is fatal to humans, I guess the lesson is to eat whatever you feel like since we’re all screwed.”
Sandford’s team also revealed that several causes of death which had been linked to various other items were in fact the work of ingesting and metabolizing deadly food. “It turns out that smoking hasn’t been killing people – it was the food,” Sandford explained. “As well, a glass of red wine a day will kill you, not because it’s wine but because it’s food.”
In order to ensure their study was not a fluke, the team next plans on setting up a control group of individuals who will be asked to refrain from eating food for a five year period. They remain hopeful that, if a decent amount of the control group remains alive at the end of that span, there will be some hope to avoid this food scourge.
“I think the best advice I can give is to ignore all those fad diets telling you to cut out gluten or eat grapefruits or some such nonsense,” Dr. Sandford remarked, “It’s actually a lot more simple than that. Just try to cut out as much food as possible.”
“You’ll live longer,” she continued.
