Fast Food, Eat Fast, Die Young!
The life style in these days has been change regarding the way that people eat. In these modern time, eating fast food becomes a daily habit that people really enjoy to eat McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, KFC and Domino’s are just examples of the well-known fast food restaurants in the whole India. It is nearly impossible to turn on the television or radio and not be hit with advertisement introducing the latest fast food trend- fresh and healthy food options. More often the media bombards us with slogans such as Subway’s common pitch to “eat fresh” or McDonald’s million dollar advertisement campaign to try the new fruit and walnut salad. There are many arguments whether we are better off living with or without the existence of fast food. It is true that there are many reasons why it is good having fast food chains around us but at the same time, it isn’t that good either.
The food industry has evolved in a way that they not be distinguishable to the human palate, but hopefully remain distinguishable to the human conscience. Though fast food tends to harm our physique at a greater level but there is always a bright side of everything. If we shed some light on the pros of fast food we can see that fast food saves a great amount of our time as we know home cooked meals comes with actually preparing and cooking along with shopping and washing the dishes. For example, the typical meal which called for being served by an ever alert attendant is now offered as a mini meal across the country. Moreover fast food restaurants provides jobs, contributes to economy and it also can be cheaper depending on the restaurants.
It generally depends on what we are shoving in our mouth at the fast food joint that is making us fat. There are a lots of fast food restaurant that have a descent menu as fast as calories go. Almost everywhere we can get grilled chicken salad, low fat milk, paneer bread and veggie sandwich on a high in fiber breads.
Fast food has its draw backs as it has some amount of benefits. I believe there are more negative consequences than positive and that fast food should make up minimal part of a healthy diet. Fast food loads high amount of sugar and fat into their foods to make them tastier and more addictive. For example, companies like McDonald’s use high fructose corn syrup in their food because it’s cheaper and more addictive. These unhealthy diets can also leads to health issues, with fat for cardiovascular disease, sugar for diabetes, sodium for hypertension and also obesity which is a common problem now in growing children. The more you gain weight, the closer you come to illness such as heart disease, arthritis, kidney disease and even a heart attack in extreme cases. Fast food can also affect our energy levels. If our body isn’t getting enough of nutrients it needs then it can result in us felling fatigued and a weak immune system.
Fast food is more complicated than it looks. Across an entire fast food menu, there are thousands of ingredients, ranging from the common place (water) to the exotic (xanthan gum). Some of the food ingredients and color such as citric acid, caramel color, mono-sodium glutamate, niacin etc. have implicated in serious health issues which are commonly used in most of the restaurants. Apart from these teeth problems, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, gastritis and other gastro intestinal problems are the health related issues occurred due to the ingredients present in fast food.
I would also like to mention here about noodles which is a unit of fast food and is produced by many bands, most common international band is the Maggie owned by Nestle. Maggie was first launched in India in the year 1983 and since then it has been in use in every house-hold of India though everyone knows the health degrading impacts of Maggie. It has faced criticism of making misleading claims in developing countries. For example: these noodles claims “vegetarian” on its product labeling, even though the production of this line makes use of several animals fats and hydrogenated fats from animal source. Maggie noodles contains dangerous levels of Mono-sodium Glutamate (MSG) and lead, it isn’t really what a dietician would ever include in a health diet.
Spokesperson for the fast food claims that there are no good or bad foods, but instead there are good or bad diets. We are free to choose what to eat, so basically our health-issues entirely depend on us. We know we can’t totally stay away from fast food but can at least control the amount we intake. We should opt more for juice, salads, nutritious food and exercise rather than consuming junk food on daily basis. The more fast we will eat the more younger we will die…
