Why is Fast Food Bad For You?

What goes on: A slice from daily office life

The other day, the graphic-art fellow in my small setup frequented the lav a bit too much. It went on since post-lunch. I couldn’t help but call him to my desk finally – the assignment was due in an hour - asked if anything troubled him. “Yes sir; it’s a bad burger and the cola turned it worse.”

The core trouble:

That’s an everyday scene. You eat all sorts of refined sugars, flour and hydrogenated oils; you spend hours in your little cubicle and hop on your bike or crawl into your car at the end of the day. And all those calories pile up; worst, the phosphoric acid in the fizzy drinks hamper the actions of stomach acids. This fellow had a burger, which is white bread (gluten) covering up the meat, deep-fried in trans-fats (e.g. margarine). Both gluten and trans-fats need strong stomach acids to get digested and unless that’s present, the enzymes can’t work on them and break them down. As a result, the partially digested material gets passed on to the intestines; they rot over time and become the breeding ground for pathogens and that again initiates another set of complications. Yes, even what we know as jaundice; it is liver failure and the liver gets all the attention while the intestines stay neglected. These pathogens thrive on sugars, so the Glucon-D you think as the life saver does you more harm than good; that people find health improving after jaundice has receded is actually the metabolism turning slower due to all these reasons and we are such a blessed lot, we eat shit thinking it hot-dogs. That’s fast food, again; it kind of got wired into our brains.

Even if we overlook the nutrition and digestion parts, we cannot possibly the processing part, which is inhuman quite often; takes down the food value and often gets the meat contaminated.

The problem is: bacteria often form a protective covering within which it hides. This is a tough shell to break and passes into the stomach easily. The low and weakened gastric acid – the body’s first line of defense against pathogens – can’t deal with them properly; these pass into the intestines and the carnival begins. End result is a torn epithelial cell lining and mucous membranes, resulting in some major gluten intolerance (the least) or if you are unlucky enough, infections in any part of the body. This is a no-brainer, since we all know how pathogens like fungus and bacteria use the bloodstream as their vehicle.

It is therefore, strongly suggested that you make your own burger while discarding the meat coming from infected animals. You never know if it had tumors, cancerous growth or something similar. In our country, people sell off the bovines once they become a burden with old age and diseases, so what you are having as fast food is diseased tissue! You do not expect MacDonald’s to import that meat from offshore sources, do you? Even the vegetarian fast foods do not bring much of a promise; maybe you can avoid the unhealthy meat, but not the refined flour, trans-fat and pesticide-flooded veggies.

And to top it all, chemicals like Ethyl-2-methyl butyrate (imparts an apple flavor), methyl-2-peridylketone (goes into popcorns for the taste) or Ethyl-3- hydroxybutanoate (to bring the taste of marshmallow) are being used more and more every passing day to keep up with the demand. So that’s the secret behind natural flavors on the labels.

Moreover, most natural and raw foods comprise natural enzymes that help in digestion. Deep frying and trans-fats screw them up, thus putting more pressure on the pancreas. Besides, they also travel around the body when not busy digesting food; instead, they chew up tumors, bacteria, viruses and dead tissues, cleaning the body. Lack of enzymes is the chief reason on why you also develop the indigestion sidekicks.

Do you still need an explanation on why you must not eat fast food?