SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC 4 News) – Researchers are paying people to eat fast food in order to see what it does to the human body.
The experiment is being conducted by Dr. Samuel Klein, a researcher at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri. He is trying to understanding why weight gain leads to diseases like diabetes and hypertension and how that relates to levels of fat in the liver and muscles.
Dave Giocolo heard a radio add offering up to $3,500 to sign up for the experiment and called right away.
He and other volunteers ate fast food daily for approximately three months. The restaurants included McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Taco Bell and KFC.
Their goal was to pack on the pounds until their weight went up a target of five or six percent.
Dawn Freeman, a volunteer, started to feel sick.
“For two weeks it was all right,” Freeman said. “Then I started really feeling awful. I could hardly breathe anymore.”
We asked people in the Salt Lake area if they would sign up for such an experiment.
“No,” Randy Nyhart said. “Fast food isn’t good for you everyday.”
The research may help in finding therapies for obesity related diseases in the future.
The volunteers will have to shed the weight they gained in order to get paid the last amount of the experiment money.
