London, July 3: When Gina Gough was rushed into hospital in agony, with severe abdominal pains and jaundice, doctors initially suspected hepatitis and put her to an isolation ward.

In fact, the 22-year-old’s condition was the result of a three-year diet that consisted almost entirely of crisps. She was eating up to 15 bags a day and went into hospital weighing 89 kg.

Her case demonstrates the potential dangers of a junk-food diet and follows last year’s controversial film Super Size Me, in which a documentary-maker ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a month and monitored the subsequent deterioration in his health. It is likely to renew fears that Britain’s younger generation faces unprecedented ill-health and early death due to poor diet.

Gough, a nursery nurse from Cannock in Staffordshire, said: “My mum used to tell me that all the crisps I ate would make me ill, but I shrugged her off because I didn’t think anything this bad could happen to me. I could have died.”

She developed gallstones up to an inch-and-a-half in diameter, which formed from the excessive amounts of cholesterol in her body. Most gallstone patients are twice her age. When her gall bladder was removed in a four-and-a-half hour operation last autumn, surgeons were shocked to discover that it had filled with stones and swollen to the size of a tennis ball. They said it could have exploded at any time.

Gough has since started to eat low-fat meals and exercise regularly and hopes her story will be a warning to others. She now weighs 79 kg.

Her appetite for the snacks developed after she was made redundant in 2000, and began spending her days in front of the television. “I’d start off with a packet of crisps for breakfast, and then I’d have a second packet. I wasn’t tempted by any other food. I was depressed after losing my job, but I felt good after eating a packet of crisps.”

She put on 32 kg and said her personality changed: “My concentration slowed and I felt tired all the time. I was a very happy-go-lucky person before, but I started to get mood swings and I became very snappy.” Gough believes she was addicted to “highs” generated by the fat and chemical additives in the crisps.