Eating Fast Food Causes Heart Disease

50 million. That is the average number of Americans that are served in a fast food restaurant each day. There are about 990 thousand fast food restaurants in America today. With new chain restaurants popping up on every corner and new restaurants opening everyday, it is obvious why so many people eat at these places. Although people think the food is tasty and cheap, they do not realize that they are causing more harm than good to their body. 60 percent or 100 billion Americans are considered overweight or obese. There are more issues than obesity coming from fast food.The additives, fats, and other harmful ingredients that go into the food are not thought about when enjoying the meal. Only when the health problems start do people realize

Janet Renee suggests that fast food often contains excess calories, fat, salt, refined carbohydrates, and cholesterol (parag.1). Population studies have shown a link between eating fast food and increased risk of developing heart disease. Eating fast food once a week can increase the risk of dying from coronary heart disease by 20 percent. Eating fast food 3 to 4 times a week increases the risk to 50 percent. Eating fast food more than 4 times a week increases the risk to 80 percent. Heart disease has many causes but one of the major causes is fast food. All of the ingredients in the food make your heart work harder than it should. Heart disease begins with damage to the heart arteries, which could happen when the fats from the fast food clog the arteries. Mark Pereira reports that the dangers of fast food are larger portions and the high calories and low nutrients. New evidence has shown that a diet heavy in fast food increases the risk of developing heart disease (parag.1). Pereira says, “The big picture is that this [fast food] aspect of globalization… might not be the best thing to spread to the cultures around the world” (parag.4). In other words, Pereira believes that our fast food industry is not healthy and therefore should not be introduced to other cultures that have not already been exposed to it. The larger portions are causing people to eat more than they should be. This is putting more fat and other harmful things in the body than it can handle so it has to work harder to try to get rid of it. The fat from the food also causes harm to the body’s arteries which causes heart disease over time. Matthew Lee claims that regions with more fast food restaurants are 2.62 times more likely to have high levels of hospitalization for heart problems (parag.4). Researchers from the University of South Australia supports the report that for every 10 percent increase in fast food restaurants, people are 1.39 times more likely to die