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Abstract

Fast foods/junk foods are typically produced in the form of packaged snacks requiring little or no preparation. They are ?ready cooked food to go?, generally made in advance and delivered instantly after heating. Mostly these are deep-fried and unprocessed and contain lot of Trans fat and chemical additives. As such the fast/junk foods are of very low nutritional value with lots of empty-calories. Here we can recall the available fast-foods like, pizzas, patties, hamburgers, beef burgers, apple pies, hot dogs, French fries, fried chicken-nuggets, fish n chips, ragouts, chilled mashed potato, tacos, pitas, kebabs, sandwiches, meat- sausages and Indian fast-food like vada pav, papri chat, bhel puri, panipuri, dahivada, puri-kachori, etc. The obesigenic effects and nutritional disorders caused by regular fast food/junk food consumption are quite well documented. Along with childhood obesity, there is heightened risk for the development of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, liver and renal disease, reproductive dysfunction and pulmonary consequences, depression, etc. Fast food could also be a cause of asthma, eczema and rhino conjunctivitis in kids. The Trans-fats are the unsaturated fats, consisting of partially hydrogenated oils which are unhealthful to human body and are involved in most of the hidden risks of various fast-food diets. The chemical-entities like acryl amide, mono sodium glutamate, azodicarbonamide, fluorinated telomere, dimethyl polysiloxane, etc., present in fast food have been implicated to be involved in serious complications like cancer, chromosomal-sperm-damage and other fertility/reproductive harms. There have also been reports of fast food-addiction. The presence of sugar and fat in fast food may lead to stimulation of endogenous opioids (enkephalin) and/or other pleasure-chemicals in brain to cause habit-producing effects. Trans-fats content of these foods can further influence human body through ghrelin, leptin, and/or insulin. Insulin has role in CNS-regulation of energy-balance, while leptin is the hormone that sends messages to brain to say when can we stop eating , i.e., it calls halt to hunger pangs and gives ?stop eating signals?. The very high levels of fat/triglycerides in blood are supposed to block the action of leptin. The role(s) of these hormones in fast-food?s obesigenic-effect is yet to be established. The risk of childhood obesity has now become a matter of serious concern for parents, because their child is getting increasingly fond of fast-food along with sugar-sweetened beverages. Children are well acquainted to consume these ?high-fat high energy-meal? while playing at game-stations or watching television, etc., the habit of which is dangerously giving them overweight and widened waistlines. It is concluded that the excessive consumption of fast-foods (fast food habits), which are nutritionally-imbalanced, may thus adversely affect health, independently associated with weight-gain and enhance the vulnerability to degenerative and other diseases.

Biography