Effects of Fast Food on Health
date: 2/8/12 ON HEALTH Nowadays, American people are very busy with their works and families. They do not have enough time to cook for themselves. Moreover, with the development of the fast food industry and chains of fast food restaurants, fast food for meals is the best choice of busy people. However, everything has two faces. Eating too much fast food also has many bad effects on health including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. First of all, obesity is a serious disease mainly caused by eating fast food. Whichever kind of fast food we eat, from pizza to fried chicken, they contain the same ingredients.
Fat and carbohydrates, which are one cause of overweighting, are present in most kinds of fast food. In addition, fast food contains fewer vitamin and other minerals which make people feel full. Containing fewer of these elements means that people tend to feel hungry frequently, and want to eat more. So, eating much fast food can also affect weight management. Last and also most importantly, fast food ingredients have a high amount of sugar which is the direct cause of obesity epidemic. Besides the ingredients of fast food, the larger sizes also increase the risk of obesity.
In the documentary film Super Size Me (2004), Mr. Morgan Spurlock showed that when given larger portions sizes, average people still eat entirely regardless of whether they are full or not. Obviously, the more fast food we eat, the more unhealthy ingredients come to our body. Secondly, some heart diseases like heart attacks and high blood pressure are the result of eating a lot of fast food. Junk food such as donuts, fried food, etc. contains trans fats which are known to increase the level of bad cholesterol and decrease the level of good cholesterol, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.
When the level of bad cholesterol in our blood is higher than the safe level, it creates the atherosclerotic plaques inside the arterial walls. Then, the arteries can be clogged, which places more stress on heart and raises blood pressure. In other words, it causes heart attacks and high blood pressure. Last but not least, type 2 diabetes is also another bad effect of eating too much fast food. Although fast food does not directly cause diabetes, it is the simple sugar and trans fat in fast food that can be the reason that leads to some symptoms such as high blood sugar, and insulin resistance.
When we eat some kinds of fast food containing high level of sugar such as milkshakes, our bodies cannot use up all these sugars. The remaining will flow to our bloodstream. It also means that we have high blood sugar. Furthermore, fast food contains a lot of trans fats which block muscle to absorb glucose and protein. This blockage leads to insulin resistance. Furthermore, insulin is an important element helping the body to absorb sugar. Consequently, our body cannot absorb sugar, and it returns to our bloodstream.
The result of that procedure is the high level of sugar in our blood, which is the cause of type 2 diabetes. In brief, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are some serious diseases that are the result of eating too much fast food, a bad habit of many American. Fortunately, fast food producers these days care more about consumers’ health by reducing the amount of trans fats and sugar in food. They also try to make fast food become healthier by adding to fast food more kinds of fruit and vegetables. Anyway, the best way to keep us healthy is to reduce eating fast food that contains too many unhealthy ingredients.
