New Study Suggests Junk Food Lovin' Millennials Are Slowly Ruining Their Kidneys

Maybe it's because we're young and our youthful metabolisms can sustain this kind of consumption (questionable), but apparently, millennials eat a whole lot of junk food. 

Which is pretty damn hypocritical, seeing as kids these days are "driving much of the health-consciousness and ingredient transparency impacting the food and beverage industry," as Cooking Light reported. And apparently, this diet is killing our kidneys.

According to Food Dive, 53% of millennials surveyed attested to "eating healthy all day yesterday," whenever yesterday was, versus 59% of Generation Xers, 70% of baby boomers and 84% of traditionalists (who, for reference, were born between 1900 and 1945). Some 50% of millennials reported eating "at least five servings of fruits and vegetables for four out of the past seven days," (???), bested by 57% of GenXers and 60% of baby boomers who claimed the same. 

As the Food and Drug Administration's pledge to revise its two-decade-old health definition indicates, there may be a generational gap in what we consider healthful. That could help explain the above discrepancies. Or, it's our unabashed love of pizza.

Either way, this fruit and veggie aversion doesn't bode well for millennials: a diet rich in junk food might be as kidney-damaging as Type 2 diabetes, according to a study published in Experimental Physiology. Researchers fed one group of rats a steady dream diet of marshmallows, chocolate, cookies and cheese for eight weeks and another, a fat-heavy diet for five weeks. Both groups were left with the same kidney wear and tear, suggesting that a sugar-loaded diet and a fatty diet wreak similar havoc on our internal organs. 

On the other hand, anecdotal evidence suggests that pizza saves lives — at least one of them.