The Dangers of Fast Food

The Dangers of Fast Food
by author Kevin Vigilante, MD and Mary Flynn, PhD

When James Dean said, "Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse" in the 1950s, Americans were much thinner and fast food was a new invention. Today Americans are simply too chubby to live as fast as the lean 1950s idol. Instead they eat fast food, die younger than they should and leave increasingly obese corpses.

Along with smoking, substance abuse and inactivity, fast food presents one of the greatest public-interest health threats to Americans today. Fast food is almost universally dangerous and should probably carry a warning from the surgeon general. It contains meat-based carcinogens, is high in total calories and saturated fat and is a principal source of trans fat.

North Americans are always looking to shave a few seconds off everything–even eating. Fast food is a $103-billion industry and more than 25,000 new fast-food restaurants opened between 1996 and 1998. In a country obsessed with immediate gratification and conspicuous consumption, what could be more seductive than the capacity to consume excessively at a moment’s notice? The dominance of the fast-food culture makes it possible to have almost continual, unhealthy moveable feasts–daily.

Not only is the food dangerous, but it promotes a lifestyle and culture that are also dangerous. Our lives are fast, frenetic and commercial. Food should be our sanctuary from the madness, not part of it. It’s no accident that Dave Thomas, the happy CEO of Wendy’s who pushes the company’s burgers on TV, had a coronary bypass operation several years ago. As we can see on more recent commercials, he’s dropped a few pounds, but that hasn’t stopped him from hawking his products to the rest of us.

Fat Kids

North American children are not eating well. Approximately 30 percent of them are obese, up more than 50 percent in the past 20 years. In general, children eat too much, and much of what they eat is unhealthy.

A study sponsored by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine revealed that despite poverty and poorer access to health care, immigrant children are actually healthier than their American-born counterparts, having fewer short- and long-term health problems. The researchers noted that immigrant children eat fewer processed foods and more fruits, grains and vegetables. Unfortunately, as time goes on, the immigrant children acquire the unhealthy eating habits of American-born children.

Most people know that fast food is not good for you, but many don’t realize how dangerous it really is. They probably know about the calories, saturated fat and maybe even the potential carcinogens in the beef. But maybe they think they can escape the worst of it by skipping the burger and having the Chicken McNuggets or the french fries. After all, fries are just potatoes cooked in vegetable oil, right? Unfortunately the fries may be worse than the burger. Why? Trans fats.

Fast Food And Trans Fats

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Excerpted with permission from Low-Fat Lies: High-Fat Frauds, LifeLine Press, 1999.

Source: alive #215, September 2000

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