What are the effects of fast foods on the body?
Fast foods are popular with more and more people. In a society where everything goes fast, they are the perfect refuges to eat quickly, without having to cook and without breaking the bank. However, excessive consumption of this junk food only has negative effects on the body.
Obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular problems, hypertension, kidney failure, physical inactivity, osteoporosis, are all diseases caused in the long term by this food.
Why are fast foods bad for your health?
The food offered in fast food restaurants is too sweet, salty, greasy and contains additives. These four elements explain why fast food is so bad. Less known than the others, the latter is carcinogenic in certain forms. Its massive use in fast food chains to maintain taste, freshness and appearance is clearly hazardous to health . With saturated fatty acids, it is cholesterol and a cardiovascular accident that lie in wait.
Above all, these foods have too high an energy content. It is this aspect that causes obesity and is at least partially to blame for the rise in cases. By itself, a fast-food meal can almost meet the nutritional needs of a day.
Worse than this abundance, burgers, fries, pizzas and other sodas are sorely lacking in vitamins, calcium and the main nutrients. If the energy contribution is important, it is far from being effective.
This causes deficiencies and the absence of dietary fiber provides a favorable ground for cancer, especially of the digestive system.
How much fast food should I eat?
These many negative effects are especially recognized when there is excess of junk food . Eating there once a month will not be a problem if the food around is healthy and balanced. In any case, regular physical activity must be practiced to eliminate all these bad things for the body.
An addiction to fast food?
Junk food has an impact on the brain. In addition to disturbing sleep, it has an influence worthy of hard drugs on the body. When you eat in a fast food restaurant , you want to eat there again and it is then the beginning of a vicious circle.
This is due to two things. By eating quickly, the feeling of satiety does not have time to arise. It is for this reason that one can feel hungry shortly after having put on a burger.
The other is the influence that junk food has on the reward circuit. Eating dirty releases dopamine, just like drugs can. Worse, it desensitizes the circuits of pleasure. Dopamine continues to be secreted by our brain, but less productive receptors continue to crave it.
The body then demands more of that food. This phenomenon can cause an addiction which can also lead to depression when the lack is felt.
“No good fast food”
What to do then to limit the negative effects. For Emilie Engel, dietitian-nutritionist, the answer is simple: avoid eating there. “In any case, the food is too fatty, salty, and far too caloric, contrary to the recommendations of the National Food Safety Agency. If the new vegetarian sandwiches stand out by providing dietary fiber, they are even more caloric. The best way is therefore to cook yourself. »
