Fast food being finally accepted worldwide as bad eating habit and source of many health related problems especially obesity and heart diseases. Fast foods alike smoking arises as an alarming threat upon the health of people from all age group world-wide, especially teenagers and office persons who are always in hurry and have no time for home-made meals.

What is fast food and why fast food is so popular?

Any food that is quick to prepare, convenient to eat and usually inexpensive generally available at snacks store, drive through restaurants and many other on the way stores is fast food. The reason for the popularity of fast food is nothing but its availability, filling meal at cheap price and convenient for eating while on work without wasting any extra time for taking meal. Since the past couple of years the fast food counters has increased in numbers and the fast food industry occupies a considerable share of the whole business economy. They have constantly increasing the size of their serving and focussed most of their advertising campaign towards youth and the office going executives.

Should fast food be considered as bad food?

There is no food with so-called bad-food as every kind of food can fit our healthy meal plan. But the main problem with fast food is that it lacks certain nutritious ingredients along with some harmful components that gets into while preparing it due to its preparing nature. Eating fast foods once a while causes no problems to our general health but replacing it with nutritious daily meal or breakfast over a long period of time will give rise to serious health problems like obesity, heart attack, diabetes etc.

What is the difference between fast food and nutritious food?

Fast food has limited inclusion whole grains, fruits and vegetables that contains essential minerals and vitamins very important for healthy life. Along with this it is typically associated with high fat, high carbohydrate, sugar, cholesterol etc. Moreover the preparation method of fast food includes saturated oil that are typically reused again and again for several days making it more vulnerable for bacteria and spoilage.
Since the fast food does not contains all the four major group of foods included in our healthy nutritious but contains high calories that contributes to obesity and related health diseases due to fast food.

Tips for healthy fast food?

Avoiding fast food has no other best alternative, but if you have no other option than to take fast food more than once a week then you should order for whatever healthy option available with fast food. Pls. note that this recommendation should be replaced only with un-healthy fast food but should not be taken as substitute for healthy diet.

• Broiled food (foods that are that are cooked by radiant heat over grill) is better choice over fried food.
• Prefer Low-fat salad food over high fat salad kind.
• Non creamy soup is better than creamy soup.
• Salad and soup are better replacement for fries.
• veggies inside pizza is healthy choice in compare to meat or similar stuff.

Top 10 diseases caused by Fast food

• Epidemic of obesity : Of all the various types of health complications from fast food, the worst and terrifying is the childhood obesity epidemic. Children and adults get easily trapped in the attractive advertisements and start taking fast food on regular basis. These children are getting over weight or obese and will bear the consequences of obesity for the rest of their life and transfer the effect to their next generation. The complications related to fast food does not manifest itself till middle age but these children will remain obese in their adulthood and gradually start developing diet related complications.
  

  fast food cause obesity epidemic

• Heart disease : Fast food is an alarming threat for heart diseases all over the world. The amount of oil and grease used in the preparation of the fast food and the way fast food is typically prepared contributes completely for ailing the healthy heart and creates hindrance for normal heart functioning. The high fats used in serving fast foods are animal fats. These fats add to the plaque and fatty deposit layers of the arterial wall making the passage area constricted for the normal volume of blood flow. The higher level of LDL and lower level of HDL contributes to heart problem. Gradually the artery start loosing its elasticity and capacity of expansion due to deposition of these fats. Now the heart has to work hard for the same job. On the other hand the way fast food is prepared is also responsible not only for heart attack but for cancer also in long run. The un-healthy saturated oils used to prepare the fast foods are being used several times before replacement, this makes it more harmful for heart and vulnerable for bacteria and spoilage.
• Diabetes (type -2)  : The people who intake fast food on regular basis are likely to develop insulin resistance, a state in which the amount of insulin produced by our pancreas is unable to process the carbohydrate and sugars into energy. Consequently high level of sugar starts circulating into blood vessel causing high blood sugar or diabetes.
• Respiratory problems : Being obese due to fast food not only puts extra pressure on heart but lungs also. The lungs has to work hard to get enough oxygen to fulfill the cell requirement where it needs to faster.
• Permanent liver damage : Many  a times, our body has problem in breaking down the type of fats constitute in our fast food intake. These fats start build up around the liver. The condition of the liver starts detoriating by manifesting itself in scaring and inflaming. The ultimate result in many cases is permanent liver damage.
• Blount’s disease : Blount’s disease is a type of obesity among the children. This is caused by too much weight on the growing and developing bones on the lower half of the body. The extra weight causes abnormal growth.
• Arthritis : Arthritis is always mistakenly consider as disease of older age, simple caused by strain on the joints. When the obesity puts more weight than the joints can handle then strain starts developing in the early age before getting old.
• Sleep Apnea : Over weight people may undergo a type of sleep problem in their unawareness. While sleeping they may literally stop breathing and wake up suddenly. This causes sleep disruption and sometimes may turn fatal due to stop breathing.
• Polycystic ovary syndrome : This is a disorder of pregnant women. Females who are obese are more likely to develop this disorder which is specially responsible for infertility, excess hair growth, irregular menstrual cycles etc.
• Dislipidemia : This is directly related to fast food obesity illness. Under this disease, the triglycerides and LDL fats grows to abnormally high level. THis may lead to greater risk of coronary heart disease.

So, fast food is equated world-wide with bad eating habit. It is not harm to take fast food once in a week but it should not be replaced with regular meal or breakfast.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Healthy eating tips for healthy diet and better nutrition
• Health benefits of apples
• Foods and Drinks
• CARE FOR WHAT YOU EAT AFTER WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY
• Kids Diet Plan and Eating Disorders