Fast Food: Why it is Bad

The 21st century is going to be a century to remember when it comes to fast food and health problems. Fast food is a multi-billion dollar business and is growing incredibly fast. McDonald’s alone has more than 31,000 restaurants worldwide. Because of the fast changing society, people around the world are relying more on fast food, especially in the United States. Fast food is cheap and convenient but is also bad for you because most of the foods are processed, fattening and contain little nutrient.

I’m not going to go into details about how fast food is processed from beginning to end because that will take a whole book. Plus, you might get sick from the graphic details. What I’m going to tell you is how fast food relates to your health and why you should avoid it as much as possible. If you want to learn more about the secrets of the fast food industry, I recommend reading Fast Food Nationby Eric Schlosser. If you don’t feel like reading watch Earthlings. This video goes in depth about how animals are raised and killed for meat. Be warned, the secrets you learn from this movie is very sickening and may scare you. You can watch a preview of Earthlings at the bottom of this page or by visiting the main site.

Most fast foods are deep-fried, high-fat, processed, contain chemical additives and have a lot of empty calories. Calories (referring to food) is a measure of how much potential energy that food possesses. The energy from calories is stored as fat, carbohydrates and protein. 1 gram of fat has 9 calories, 1 gram of carbs has 4 calories and so does 1 gram of protein. This is why food that contains a lot of fat have more calories. Most fast food restaurants used hydrogenated fats to deep-fried their food because it is cheap, plentiful and has a long shelf life. The bad thing about fat is that when heated to high temperatures for a certain amount of time, it undergoes a chemical transformation and becomes carcinogenic. By eating deep-fried food, you are consuming carcinogens plus empty calories that do more harm than good.

Many of the foods found in fast food restaurants are not natural because they have been modified to cut down on cost. Some of them are genetically altered, sterilized using radiation or chemical preservatives, and treated with growth hormones. Many of these methods are not safe and is one of the reasons why there are health epidemics in countries that consumed fast food. Be aware that fast food industries don’t really care about your health, they value money more than you and will do whatever it takes to increase their profits.

The calories you get from fast food are mostly empty calories, meaning the calories have little or no nutritional value. Empty calories give you quick energy but also stimulates your pancreas to produce more insulin. Insulin has many roles in your body, one of them is storing unused energy as fat. By eating fast food, you increase your risk of obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases. In spite of how bad fast food is, people still eat it everyday. The truth is, there are no foods out there that are 100 percent healthy to eat, even fruits and vegetables have small amounts of carcinogens in them. The key to better health is to eat more organic and unprocessed food, avoid fast food as much as possible so your health will not suffer.

Earthlings Trailer:

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