Fat Foods - The Health Hazards

Introduction

Almost everyone in the world enjoys a delicious meal. Every meal that we consume can be broken down into different constituents. Those are carbohydrates, vitamins, proteins, minerals, fibers and fats. A healthy and balanced diet of an individual should contain each constituent in right proportion. This enables the body to grow properly and maintain regular and good health. However, in our fast paced lifestyles of today, we often make compromises towards it and choose foods which are high on tastes but not always the wholesome diet that our body demands - something that we otherwise know as junk foods or fat foods.

Fat foods as the name quite clearly suggests, is referred to those kinds of eatables which are high on fats and contain very little or zero nutritional value. These contain ingredients which can be quite harmful to our body if regularly consumed. Common foods that fall in the junk foods category are fried fast foods, salted chips and carbonated beverages. Also, multinational fast food chains offering pizzas burgers etc have had their share in raising popularity of such food items. With that, the diseases like obesity, diabetes and high levels of cholesterol are on the rise and prevalent in cities.

 

History

Fat foods are generally convenience foods which require almost no preparation and are ready to eat, sometimes straight out of the packaging. Such type of foods gained popularity with people getting busier and busier each year. The fast and furious lifestyle of families where there is little time available to cooking has also led to an increase in consumption of such items. The main target of such foods has always been young children. They are also the most vulnerable to its harmful effects. But now people are getting aware of the ill effects of such foods and actively choosing healthier alternatives. The awareness among popular fast food chains has also resulted in them adding healthy food items to their menu, the kind which has other nutrients like carbohydrates, proteins etc while minimizing on unnecessary fats.

Features

Let us break down the types of fats so as to better understand it and ascertain what types are good or all of it is evil. There are four types of fats that are found in fat foods as identified by the nutritional experts. They are saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and trans fats. Saturated fats, in layman terms are those containing hydrogen and can be found in animal fats like butter, cheese, ghee etc. Excess amounts of saturated fats have been known to cause various types of cancer. Then there is monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat which do not have that extra hydrogen. These are usually liquid at room temperature and thus easier to digest than saturated fats. Trans fats are man-made and often found in large quantities in many junk foods. It is also the most harmful among the types of fat.

Comments

Most Recent Articles