The attractive marketing strategies, the bright mouth-watering colours, flavours, and innovative content created by food vloggers and reviewers have made it impossible for us to say no to fast food. Even on your way to the gym, you might find a small fast food corner serving delicious crisps, hot pizzas, or pasta. No matter how hard you try to avoid them, it has become an impossible task for today’s generation to completely remove fast food from their life. Do you still think the cost of your fast food is somewhere around 300-500 bucks? Continue reading and know the actual cost of every fast food meal you take in.
What exactly is Fast-Food?
Fast foods are not only those food items that can be cooked quickly or under a minute of time but also those sold in restaurants or stores with either pre-cooked or frozen ingredients. They are just reheated and sold in good packages and can be consumed anywhere and everywhere as you’re on the run. Fast food gives us the convenience of consuming it from anywhere and appears highly attractive in terms of both colour, texture, and aroma.
Is Fast-food harmful?
Yes. They are more harmful than you think. They destroy your mind and body’s fitness, hijack the reward centers in your brain, give us a feeling of pleasure, which makes us consume more. They also disrupt our satiety signals and hunger communication by giving the sensation of low satiety and making us addicted to that food. The source of fats and other macronutrients is different in fast foods than the traditional food. Let’s deep dive into the process that your body undergoes after consuming any food.
Every time you consume a food item, a chain of hormones and enzymes trigger psychological pathways signaling us either to eat more or to stop eating. These hormones signal us to stop eating only when the body has received enough nutrition. This is the science behind you feeling full after drinking a glass of milk with roughly even around 100 calories. On the other hand, you still feel like having one more slice of pizza even after consuming a whole regular size pizza that has around 300 calories. Any fast food you see around is packed with sugar, oil, tastemakers, and salts and has very little to no nutrients. Whenever you consume fresh fruits, uncooked vegetables, nuts, or unsweetened milk, they give good signals to the brain as they are overloaded with both macro and micronutrients, and restrict you from eating more. Also, our brains have an effective mechanism to process the information of food and signals to judge whether they are healthy or unhealthy. They basically identify three tastes such as fat, sweet, and salt. Whenever they identify one of these tastes, the neurotransmitters release reward and pleasure signals.
Once these signals are released, they hijack our brain and do not send accurate satiety signals resulting in more consumption than needed. The pleasure signals are released just because of the taste of the food, and not due to the nutritional values. Thus, the quantity of food consumed increases, shooting up the calories, especially the fat and sugar content of the body. With more and regular consumption of fast food, more fat gets stored in the body, the cholesterol level increases, making you unhealthy. It is obvious that with a sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits, you may invite unwanted diseases like obesity, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc. Thus, your fast foods are no longer costing you a small amount, but actually costs your health, and might even lead to a big hospital bill.
What should we do now to escape fast food?
Understanding the science and the working of fast food, it is good if you try to quit your bad eating habits. But you cannot simply put an end to these habits in just a day. It is a long process and you can achieve it with consistency. There is a scientific meaning behind every craving. Like when you are craving sugar, it means that your energy levels are low and your body is looking for fast fuel. Similarly, you crave salt when you are dehydrated and eat salty chips and fries. So, when you crave any taste next time, understand what your body is trying to communicate and substitute it with naturally available tastes like fresh fruits, walnuts, pistachios, etc. Even while choosing the oil used in your kitchen, go for olive oils, coconut oil, and try avoiding over-processed fatty oils like refined sunflower oil, rice bran oil, etc.
And to conclude, while consuming healthy food, also consume healthy insights from industry experts, fitness trainers, doctors, or anyone whom you trust to seek help from for your fitness journey.
Santosh Kumar is a Professional SEO and Blogger, With the help of this blog he is trying to share top 10 lists, facts, entertainment news from India and all around the world.