eating fast food

Eating Fast Food

Fast food makes people fat and could cause diabetes , heart disease , and hypertension . These are only some of the people 's common fears about fast food which the fast food makers have always managed to dodge due to the absence of sound scientific evidence . The general concern is caused by the alarming incidence of obesity among America 's children which has started people to question the wisdom of fast food-eating . The sedentary life which is led by more and more people in the United States today has lent a

more urgent note to the quest for what exactly is the right food for Americans in this fast-paced world . It has also prompted researchers and health professionals to conduct studies on the effect of fast food on people 's health

Fast food makes us fat . While most people have already come to accept the fact that fast food has very low nutritive value - in fact some refer to it as junk food ' - it was only fairly recently that a scientific study has finally confirmed that indeed fast food makes people fat or , worse , obese , and in fact could increase the risk of their acquiring diabetes , a disease which is secondary to obesity . The study which was conducted over 15 years involved some 3000 young adults whose lifestyles were monitored during the period . Published December 2004 in the Lancet medical journal , the findings showed that subjects who ate fast food at least two times a week during the period of the study , registered weight gains of 10 pounds more than those subjects who visited fast food joints less than once a week (MSNBC . Interestingly as of 2002 , the National Restaurant Association (NRA ) reported that the average American over 8 years of age was eating out at least 5 times a week (Burke . Applying this NRA report to the findings of the aforementioned 15-year study , it will be entirely possible for an average 8-year-old American to grow up to be a twenty-three-year-old who is more than 20 pounds heavier than another 23-year-old who does not frequent fast food joints . In fact this might even be a conservative estimate if we consider Burke 's report about studies which show that fast food is now a daily fare for around 33 percent of children in America today

Fast food could cause heart disease . Although the study mentioned above was primarily concerned with the calorie and fat contents of fast food and its effects on obesity and diabetes , some professionals are also concerned about the possible negative effect of fast food on the heart and hypertension since it is now common knowledge that obesity is also associated with heart diss and sodium , which is contained in large quantities in fast food , is generally known to be directly related to hypertension . As a matter of fact , Firfer had already reported way back in 1998 about a study conducted by a research team from the Veterans Administration Medical Center in San Francisco which has...