Junk food diarrhea

from StrategyPage:

 switching from one's normal Asian diet to a rich western diet causes diarrhea, and this could kill a lot of malnourished North Koreans if that country gets taken over by the South or by China.

Now doctors realized that given the state of North Korean soldiers’ digestive tract because of the bad food and water, suddenly switching to South Korean snack foods and other delicacies the northerners had never had would induce diarrhea and disability until their digestive tract could adjust to the Western diet.

This problem was not unknown in South Korea. That’s because of the more than 500,000 South Korean troops who have served, individually, in U.S. Army units since 1950. ...

The KATUSAs are treated just like the American troops, living in the same barracks, eating in the same mess halls and getting the same medical care.

A common medical problem with KATUSAs was diarrhea because the KATUSA did not follow instructions and shift gradually to the very different (especially in terms of sweets, processed foods and so on) food served in the American dining halls and when troops were out in the field. The diarrhea problem was largely gone by the 1980s as the South Korean economy became affluent enough to produce local versions of the American processed and snack foods.

Personally, some of this might be because a lot of American food has ilk in it, and Asians tend to be unable to digest lactose in milk.

but you have to watch when you refeed someone who has been chronically starved or malnourished because they cannot absorb the food.

LINK Some concentration camp survivors died when fed
As did the survivors of Napoleon's Russian debacle.

My main experience is with children suffering from marasmus and kwashiorkor.

The intestinal lining gets thinner and fewer villae to absorb food, so they can't digest stuff.
And often they would just die a week or two later, probably because of nutritional cardiomyopathy. (heart muscle replaced with connective tissue, and too weak to keep beating when the person starts recovering).

Sigh