Obesity and Heart Disease as a Consequences of Eating Fast Food

A person would probably say that he or she only lives once but in reality, people live everyday and die once. It is just a matter of fact of what a person will do everyday to live a longer life. One key factor in prolonging life is choosing a healthy lifestyle. As a human being, a person uses his or her body as a foundation to live everyday. People depend on what they eat or do with their body which most likely to affect them throughout their entire life.

In this generation, the kinds of food people consume can now be ordered in just one click away or one minute waiting due to modern technology. This kind of food is what they called fast food. But, people need a deeper understanding of whether it is good or bad. Due to the several ingredients that fast food contains, it causes some medical conditions that people might deal with when excessive consumption of fast food is taken.

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In order to prevent diseases such as heart attack and obesity, people should reduce their intake of fast food because it contains unhealthy ingredients that are bad for the body.

Fast food restaurants have become popular all around the world starting in 1921 when White Castle restaurant opened in Kansas, United States. Today, there is a lot of fast food chains that people encounter such as McDonald’s, KFC, Popeyes, In N Out, and many more. Due to the popularity of these restaurants, people tend to buy fast food because it saves their time and money.

Many fast food restaurants nowadays can be ordered through a drive-thru window or through online delivery apps such as UberEats, DoorDash, and PostMates. With this, people were able to save their time and have more time to get their work done. They can also be found everywhere such as movie theaters, outlets, shopping malls, or even at schools. Such restaurants also offer good deals for only a dollar of hamburgers or fries and some combo deals including sugary soda.

Health among customers who consume fast food is now a concern. Fast food contains a poor nutritional diet which can affect people’s health and lead to diseases such as obesity, hypertension, and heart disease. It is not promoting a healthy diet because it contains unhealthy ingredients such as oil, sugar, salt, and high-calorie food. According to Janssen et al. (2017), fast food frequent consumption has been associated with higher BMI (1). Body mass index (BMI) is used to calculate a person’s height and weight to determine if a person is healthy. A higher BMI such as greater than 30 is considered obese which is one of the problems that fast food intake can cause. For instance, obesity is contributed by large amounts of fat due to high cholesterol. Based on Targonskaya (2019), the fat that is used in fast food is trans fat that can lead to this “bad” cholesterol which may cause a person to have hyperlipidemia, hypertension and heart disease. That is why fast food is bad for the body.

On the other hand, fast food is cheap and it tastes good. Thus, regarding the calories that a person needed a day, Garage (2019) states that fast food provides affordable access to it. For instance, fresh foods from the local supermarket provide only 40 calories per dollar but McDonald’s sells a grilled chicken sandwich that provides 73 calories per dollar (Garage, 2019). With this, a low-income person would probably choose to take a good deal sandwich from fast food rather than going to the supermarket for fresh food. In a study found in India by Yadav and Nath (2018), among 100 adolescents, girls who consume fast food four times a week acquires more total energy when compared with those who do not (79). Relatively, it was found to be a significant predictor of dietary fat among girls as compared to boys (Yadav & Nath 79, 2018). For instance, fast food consumption atleast four times a week could also be one of the major sources of energy of the person. Since the needed energy of the body is now easily accessible and affordable, then, people would not have a hard time cooking at home or spending much more money at the grocery just to get fresh food.

Garage (2019) states that a person can afford his or her needed calories when consuming fast food but the leading effect after this consumption may be worse than a person will ever think. If the person chooses fast food because it is cheap, then, he or she is way more choosing a bad healthy lifestyle habit than a good one. According to TNN (2017), not all fast food calories contain good nutrition because they also contain chemical additives. A person will gain weight because of this poor nutrition as well as eating more and not doing any exercise to burn these calories (TNN, 2017). Subsequently, a higher chance of getting obese is expected. Maybe some people would not have noticed it, but that is the way it is.

It is true that a person gains more total energy when consuming fast foods (Yadav & Nath 79, 2018) but the source of that energy will come from the large amounts of fat found in fast food products. Too much fat is bad for a person’s health because it can lead to diseases (Targonskaya, 2019). Based on the documentary film titled Super Size Me in 2004, Director Morgan Spurlock made himself an experiment of only eating McDonald’s menu for 30 days. Among these days, he experienced some sorts of negative effects that affected his body such as “weight gain, feelings of depression, lethargy, and a decreased sex drive” (study.com). He entirely gained a total of 25 pounds in a month and it took him 14 months to lose that weight completely as what Spurlock said on one of the interviews with the salon (salon.com). Although it took him many months just to recover his body to his 30-day McDonald’s menu only, it is still disturbing to anyone who are buying and eating fast food because of its leading consequences.

Being wise for consuming a kind of food is important because it is for the sake of the person’s health. Limiting a person’s fast food consumption is necessary to promote a more healthy lifestyle and encourage them to cook their own and eat healthy foods. This limiting fast food consumption should matter to others because it is the privilege of all ages people to live a healthier life. It is also to let people be aware of what are the possible consequences of eating fast food that will bring to their health. If no resolution is acted upon this argument, then the number of people with diseases such as obesity and heart disease will increase due to key factors including fast food consumption. Health is very important. As long as a person is young, he or she will still have the privilege to choose the healthy eating habit so the person will not regret in the end.