Another Reason to Avoid Fast Food?
Well, it appears there is yet another reason, in a longer laundry list that seems to grow every year, to avoid fast food. The consumption of fast food has also now been linked to a substantial increase in stroke risk. This comes as no surprise, since fast foods, which commonly include things like cheeseburgers, highly fattening sides like french fries, onion rings, fried mushrooms and other high fat and high sodium (albeit good tasting!) tidbits, are almost always a higher fat, higher sodium, higher calorie option when compared to more healthful options that you can make on your own at home.
The specific study that seems to implicate fast food in higher stroke risk is one which studied neighborhoods that happened to have a lot of fast food restaurants in them. They found that when compared to other neighborhoods where the fast food joints were not as plentiful, stroke risk also happened to be statistically lower. Again, this is no surprise since fast food contributes significantly to obesity, high blood pressure, and an out of whack metabolism, and only those that avoid fast food all together, as long as they eat healthy at home, will enjoy better health, a lower weight, better heart health, and of course better circulatory health and circulation, both of which contribute to fending off stroke risk.
The link isn’t totally clear though, because it’s not clear whether the cart comes before the horse or vice versa. What I mean is that it’s not clear whether there are more fast food restaurants in these areas because they have populations which are demographically targeted because they have worse eating habits, or whether it’s the other way around, and the fact that there is an abundance of fast food restaurants in the neighborhood is actually the reason that people eat more unhealthy. Remember that story a while back where some cities are trying to limit the number of fast food joints that are allowed?
Similiarly, fast food consumption, and we’re not talking the heart healthy types of fast food like say, a healthy low fat Subway sub or a nice big salad, but the typical stuff we correlate with fast food like burgers and fries and things like that, were also correlated with heart disease and obesity which is also not surprising. I’d like to see the number of healthy fast food places increase, not just fast food places like McDonald’s offering healthier options, because they still offer that tempting bad stuff too and it’s hard for people to smell that and then order a salad or fruit and yogurt parfait. That’s just my preference though, because I know how I am!
