fast food
Reply With Quotehttp://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/G...Fast_food.html
1) Residents of the United States spend more on fast food a year than they do movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and records combined. Americans shelled out more than $110 billion on burgers, fried chicken, and the like in 2000, compared with $6 billion in 1970.
That obsession with fast food is harming adults and children alike, said Eric Schlosser, a journalist who wrote Fast Food Nation, subtitled The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.
The best seller, just out in paperback, contends that fast food has changed the way Americans eat, and is partly to blame for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and deaths from E-coli bacteria. Its author proposes that people essentially boycott fast food until restaurants start preparing healthier food.
"People should know what they're eating, and how it's made; they should spend their money at places that make food well," Schlosser told Good Morning America. "Nobody is forcing people to eat this stuff, and fast food places will change when customers demand changes."
Even if 2 percent to 3 percent of customers complained, it would make a big drop in sales, Schlossberg said. The fast food companies aren't out to harm us. But what is good for them in the short run, is not good for us in the long run.
When Fast Food Nation first came out, McDonald's gave this response:
"His [Schlosser's] opinion is outvoted 45 million to 1 every single day, because that's how many customers around the world choose to come to McDonald's for our menu of variety, value and quality," the statement said.
Healthy, Happy Meals?
U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher issued a "call to action" in mid-December, saying some 300,000 deaths a year are related to obesity, and calling for the removal of fast-food from schools.
"Fast food is really moving into schools, which is horrible, because eating habits are formed when you're young, so if you get fat then, you've started a lifelong battle," Schlosser said.
Fast food isn't the only cause of obesity, but Schlosser says it is one of the factors that is making the United States the fattest country in the world, with huge costs in health care and mortality that go along with it. The typical can of soda contains the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar.
"Fast food places lure in the kids with toys and movie tie-ins," Schlosser said. "Parents have to be much more conscious of what their kids are eating. The first responsibility is for the parents, and then for the industry to alter their recipes. There's no reason they can't make a happy meal that's healthy."
He contends that unless the food is made healthy, fast-food chains should not be allowed to spend millions advertising fatty, unsafe food for children.
Factory Conditions Unsafe
Though he used to enjoy fast food hamburgers and fries as much as anyone, Schlosser said he doesn't go to fast food joints anymore, because of what he has learned about the ground meat especially.
One of the problems with fast food is that it has created a "centralized, industrialized food system, which is very vulnerable to spreading pathogens," he said. Each day in the United States, about 200,000 people are sickened by food borne pathogens (often found in ground beef). Of those who get sick, 900 are hospitalized, and 14 die annually.
Meat infected with E. coli and other pathogens are distributed far and wide because of industrialized production and inadequate government oversight, Schlosser said. Today's food-processing methods, where parts of many animals go into one burger, may only increase the odds of infection.
Schlosser cites a 1996 Agriculture Department study that found 78.6 percent of ground beef samples from processing plants around the country contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material.
Another problem is that fast foodchains tend to hire unskilled immigrant laborers who end up working in unsafe conditions, but do not know to ask for improvements. The high demand from fast-food companies for meat has led injury rates in slaughterhouses to be three times higher than those in typical factories, Schlosser said.
With his own kids, Schlosser takes his cue from Nancy Reagan's advice about drugs: "Just Say No." His children, who are 9 and 11, have stopped begging for fast food
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2) Why fast food makes you get fat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3210750.stm
Energy dense and dangerous...
The nutritional make up of fast food encourages people to gorge on it unintentionally, increasing their risk of obesity, research suggests.
Experts at the Medical Research Council found most fast food is very dense in calories - you only need a small amount to bump up your calorific intake.
They found that these "energy dense" foods can fool people into consuming more calories than the body needs.
The research is published in the journal Obesity Reviews.
Our bodies were never designed to cope with the very energy dense foods
Professor Andrew Prentice
A typical fast food meal has a very high energy density. It is more than one and a half times higher than an average traditional British meal and two and a half times higher than a traditional African meal.
The researchers concluded that a diet high in fast foods will increase a person's risk of weight gain and obesity - even though they may feel that they are eating no more than they would if they ate an average meal.
Subconscious ability
Researcher Professor Andrew Prentice, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "We all possess a weak innate ability to recognise foods with a high energy density.
"We tend to assess food intake by the size of the portion, yet a fast food meal contains many more calories than a similar-sized portion of a healthy meal.
"Since the dawn of agriculture, the systems regulating human appetite have evolved for the low energy diet still being consumed in rural areas of the developing world where obesity is almost non-existent.
"Our bodies were never designed to cope with the very energy dense foods consumed in the West and this is contributing to a major rise in obesity."
Professor Prentice drew particular attention to the consequences of a diet high in fast foods for children.
"Children have not yet developed any of the learned dietary restraint that needs to be exerted by anyone wishing to remain slim in the modern environment.
"It's surely a stark paradox that the strategy used to achieve rapid weight gain in malnourished children in Africa - the frequent offering of energy-dense foods - has now become the norm for many overweight children in affluent societies."
Limited choice
Dr Susan Jebb, of the MRC Human Nutrition Research Centre, said: "In many outlets, the choice is so limited that it's virtually impossible to select a combination of items with even a moderate energy density.
"You'd need to eat well below the portion size offered to avoid greatly exceeding recommended energy and fat requirements.
"Fast food companies could play a major part in halting the rise in obesity if they adopted a more positive attitude to healthy eating such as providing meals of lower energy density, appropriately marketed and with point-of-sale nutrition labelling."
Dr Jebb said many supermarket ready-meals and convenience foods were also very energy dense.
"If we're going to stem the tide of obesity, it's important that we don't just swap one unhealthy meal for another.
"Research has shown time and again that to maintain a healthy weight, we need to eat foods with less fat and added sugars and to take more exercise."
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nadam se da se ces moci naci koje objasnjenje u ova dva teksta. Ako te interesuje jos, mozes kroz google potraziti, o tome ima vise miliona stranica vezanih za problema izazvane takvom ishranom
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Originally Posted by PsychOdelic^Boy
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