Teen loses vision due to an unbalanced diet

A 17-year-old’s vision has deteriorated to the point of blindness due to living on a diet of chips and crisps.

Tests found that he had malnutrition damage and severe vitamin deficiencies, which led to nutritional optic neuropathy.

Dr Denize Atan said: ‘He explained this [his diet] as an aversion to certain textures of food that he really could not tolerate, and so chips and crisps were really the only types of food that he wanted and felt that he could eat. He had blind spots right in the middle of his vision. That means he can't drive and would find it really difficult to read, watch TV or discern faces. He can walk around on his own though because he has got peripheral vision.’