Southern-Style Diet Tied to Increased Mortality Risk For Kidney Disease Patients

A new finding reveals that consuming southern-style diet increases mortality risk by 50 percent for those suffering from kidney disease.

The southern-style diet consists of processed meat, fried food items and sugar-sweetened beverages. The researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham revealed that adherence to southern-style cuisine elevated death risk in those with chronic kidney disease.

Chronic kidney disease, also known as chronic renal disease, is the progressive loss in renal function over months or years.

According to the National Kidney Function, selecting the apt food helps regulate the build-up of waste products and fluids in the blood of those with kidney disease, which eventually helps lower the workload of kidney. It also helps slow down the deterioration of kidney function.

In the current study, the researchers worked on the data retrieved from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS). They successfully identified 3,972 participants who had stage 3-5 chronic kidney disease, but had not started dialysis.  After this, the dietary patterns of the participants were evaluated. The researchers noticed that those who ate primarily southern-style diet had 50 percent increased risk of death over the 6.5 year follow-up period.

"This adds to the evidence that suggests that the foods that they eat can meaningfully impact long-term survival in individuals with kidney disease," said lead author Orlando Gutiérrez, M.D., associate professor of medicine in the UAB Division of Nephrology.

The survival chances improved if they included fruits and vegetables in their diet; however, this did not offer any protective benefit over the progression of kidney failure.

"For clinicians, this suggests that focusing on modifying general patterns of foods that people eat, instead of individual components of the foods like salt intake or fat intake, may be more helpful in counseling patients," Gutiérrez said. "It may be more helpful to focus on general patterns of eating instead of individual nutrients since this may be easier for patients to conceptualize and therefore actualize."

 A study conducted earlier revealed how southern-style diet ups the risk of stroke.

The finding was documented in the American Journal of Kidney Disease.