Fast Food and its Conclusion

So maybe I still don’t know exactly what is making people come back to fast food, but I do know that people really need to watch what they eat and how much of the stuff they eat. There are some who can look away from the good feelings that fast food gives and realize that it is bad. These people realize that too much fast food can ultimately end the life of the consumer and they care enough about their body to exercise regularly and eat healthy whenever possible. The urge for food that gives the consumer the warm and fuzzy feeling can make them do crazy things like spend $70 a week on fast food. It is all personal choice in the end. The consumer needs to be in the right mind and realize what they are putting into their body. The consumer needs more self-control because the fast food industry will not stop making the food that messes with the consumers mind until it stops giving them billions of dollars a year. Fast food may be good at times but it is not something to risk my life over and some of the health issues seem like they would make someone suffer and that just isn’t how I want to go out. It’s time for the nation to pay attention to the food they eat so we can become the healthiest nation instead of the fattest, fast food addicted nation that we are known for around the world. Do you want to act like a lab rat?

Rats Get Served.....Fast Food

To help find a link between the effects of drugs to fast food, scientists have started doing test on lab rats and fast food is hard wiring our brain for cravings. The latest study, published March 28 in "Nature Neuroscience," likened the effects of high-fat, high-calorie fast food to those of cocaine or heroin, in animals at least (Greviskes). The research is proving that the pleasure centers in rats brains were overstimulated from fast food almost like that of an addict’s cocaine binge. Over time, the rats pleasure centers had become overloaded that the rats actually had to keep eating fast food just to feel normal. In the experiment the researchers studied three different groups of lab rats for forty days. One group ate healthy the while the second group ate a limited amount of junk food. The third group was allowed to gorge on the high-fat, high-calorie fast foods which resulted in them becoming obese. During the experiment, one of the researchers discovered that the obese rats’ brains had started to change, not like a super hero. The rats’ brains adapted by decreasing their activity, but with a price. For the rats to stay happy and to not become depressed, they had to keep eating this high-fat food. The obese rats soon were not able to control their eating habits and were often eating despite the electric shocks. When the obese rats were put on a healthy diet, they refused to eat, starving themselves for two weeks (Greviskes). This research has proven that rats can get addicted to fast food and opens another question, can people get so addicted to fast food that they lose control over their eating habits much like these rats did?

http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/03/30/fast-food-is-like-heroin-studies-find/

Fast Foods Side Effect

Fast food can have some serious long term effects on a person’s body. Some health issues are type 2 diabetes, asthma, liver disease, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and lastly cancer. Type 2 diabetes is caused by obesity and is now increasing found in children which use to be exceedingly rare. Over the past couple of years obesity is now sweeping the nation and spreading throughout the world and has become a worldwide epidemic. Diabetes can lead to other various and also severe health complications like hypertension, kidney failure, etc. Obesity is now becoming the most common cause of liver disease, surpassing both hepatitis and alcohol abuse. Liver disease is the cause of fat being built up in the liver, causing severe damage to the liver. Now that leaves the two most deadliest of health issue pertaining to fast food, cardiovascular disease and cancer. There is research that suggests that almost one-third of cancers are diet-related and it all goes back to obesity. Obesity does nothing but increase the chances of someone getting cancer all throughout the body. Just throwing a little fact out but obese women are more than three times more likely to develop uterine cancer. Cardiovascular disease is just as deadly as cancer. This disease is the cause of plaque and fat build up in the arteries that can lead to heart failure. An unhealthy diet is the leading cause of this disease, making the number cause of death, globally. This is just some insight on how things could get if you feel like you or a family member is starting to eat more and more fast food each day.


http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/health-effects-fast-food

Drugs to Fast Food

Some consumers would like to compare fast food to drugs on how much both cost and on the effects on the human body. Most drugs are expensive, like cigarettes. A pack of cigarettes, in the state of Georgia, cost $5.29; the cost varies state-to-state. In personal experience I have known people to go through a couple of packs a day, so about $74.06 a week at two packs a day. A Big Mac from McDonalds cost about the same as a pack of cigarettes. Eating a Big Mac every day and if the consumer has a family then the price goes higher than the price of cigarettes making fast food the same, or more, expensive than drugs. In a post from a mother with a family of six, has done her own comparison on how fast food and drugs are linked. Her first way of linking the two is that they both create uncontrollable eating habits. In a way I do agree with this. When people think of something they want and are fixated on that certain object, they cannot help themselves but just to go out and get what is on their mind. From earlier, drugs also release a kind of fake endorphins into the blood stream giving that relaxed feeling, this is the kind of endorphin that people can get addicted to. With health effects they may differ on the kind of drug and also drugs will kill you faster but both are even in the severity of the side effects.

http://www.lifewith4boys.com/2011/04/5-ways-fast-food-is-like-crack.html
http://www.theawl.com/2011/06/what-a-pack-of-cigarettes-costs-state-by-state

Fast Food with a side of Endorphins

From my earlier post I started talking about a chemical in the human body called endorphins. These endorphins are released into the blood stream when someone eats fast food. Endorphins are among the brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters, which function to transmit electrical signals within the nervous system. At least 20 types of endorphins have been demonstrated in humans. Endorphins are the natural opiate analogues found in our bodies which resemble morphine and Heroine. In contrast to the opiate drugs, however, activation of the opiate receptors by the body's endorphins does not lead to addiction or dependence (Stoppler). Endorphins are what give the consumer that happy feeling they get after they eat their fast food meal. All-in-all endorphins are a completely natural body relaxer; it takes the stress out of a busy day. In the movie Supersize Me, there is a part in the movie where Morgan Spurlock, the man eating nothing but McDonalds for a month, was saying that he felt like crap, but when he got finished eating he felt better and happier. As happy as the consumer may feel they cannot get addicted to these endorphins, so there for endorphins are not the main cause of people becoming “addicted” to fast food.

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=55001
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=YbeEor5hpiQ&NR=1   2:13-2:36

Starting with Fast Food

Fast food can make people fat and most consumers know this, but then why does the consumer keep coming back to buy this greasy, fatty food? Sure, there are many reasons why people keep coming back; it is easy, convenient and inexpensive. Fast food is meant for the busy working American that is always going and has no time to stop and have a meal, but it is not meant to be part of someone’s everyday diet. So then why do the people who have time and can cook a healthier meal at their house, keep coming back? Honestly, I do not think that it is the taste that brings the consumers back for more of this greasy food so there has to be another explanation of why fast food has become so popular and is spending throughout the world like a virus of obesity. Though some would claim that fast food has addictive qualities, I on the other hand think that choosing to eat fast food every day is a personal choice of the people not knowing the harmful effects of this food. The main reason is that there is a chemical, called endorphins, in the human body that releases when you eat fatty foods such as Fast Food. Thus causing America to be the home of the most obese people in the world and spreading heart condition throughout the country. Some consumers would compare fast food with drugs on how addictive it can be and how much harm it can do to the human body.