Fast Food Or Junk Food Are Harmful To Health!
Fast food or junk food are foods that are loaded with calories, sugars and salt, fats, cholesterol and trans fats and lack healthy nutrients like fibre, vitamins and minerals and antioxidants.
Most fast food may lack either complex carbohydrates or proteins or both.
Bakery products like cakes, pastries, biscuits, fried food like ‘wada’, ‘samosa’, ‘bhaji or pakoda’, french fries, fast foods like burgers, hotdogs, sandwiches, pizzas, snacks like chips, farsan, sweet delicacies like gulab jam, basundi, rabdi, jalebi, all kind of mithai including burfi, pedhas, chocolates and aerated sweetened soft drinks, sports energy drinks and alcohol are junk foods and drinks.
Sugar free mithai or sweets also are fast food, since they contain a lot of fat.
Also the sugar substitutes are also not harmless.
Processed and frozen meats like pork bacon, ham, salami, sausages and even chicken nuggets, salami, sausages also are examples of fast foods. They are high in sodium, cholesterol, saturated fats and trans fats.
They are often also treated with sodium nitrite to prevent growth of microorganisms in them and improve their shelf life. Nitrates and nitrites are thought to be carcinogenic.
The internationally famous fried chicken and the equally famous chicken or tuna sandwiches, claiming to be healthy because they have lettuce, tomato and cucumber but loaded with mayonnaise and other such sauces too, are loaded with fat, calories, cholesterol and trans fats.
Thus these foods, very popular amongst young people, too are junk foods.
When buying such foods, please check the labels for fat and sugars. Labels like ‘no added sugar’ can be misleading as it generally means no sucrose, there could be other sugars used.
Labels like zero trans fats too could also be misleading. Most bakery products in India carry the no trans fatty acid labels. But we don’t know if there are any periodic checks on such products to verify the claims of the manufacturer.
The so called health drinks and foods like fruit juices, energy bars, muesli bars too are junk foods as they still contain a lot of sugar or fats or both.
Over consumption of fast food high in salt, sugars, fats, cholesterol, trans fats and calories leads to obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, hypercholesterolemia , hypertriglyceridemia and heart disease, strokes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and certain cancers.
So keep the consumption of fast food low or minimal and exercise regularly to burn off any extra calories consumed through the fast food and prevent weight gain and all the above diseases.
If you are looking to lose weight, keep their consumption low, if you have hypertension, type 2 diabetes, hypercholesterolemia , hypertriglyceridemia and heart disease, avoid them as much as possible.
Also read the articles, ‘Dangers Of Eating Too Much Sugar’, ‘How Much Salt Do I Need’, and ‘The Good And The Bad Fats’ on this website.