PT health Life- Fast food can increase the risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. Now researchers have discovered that eating a lot of fast food can also contribute to fatty liver disease, a condition that causes fat to build up in the liver.
1. Eating a lot of fast food causes heart disease and diabetes
Fast food is increasingly popular in modern society. However, along with convenience, overusing fast food is really not good for your health. Fast foods including drinks and snacks such as hamburgers, fried chicken, sausages, French fries, milk tea, carbonated drinks… all contain a lot of carbohydrates, with little or no fiber.
Studies have shown that fast food can increase the risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. When these foods are digested, carbs are released as glucose (sugar) into the bloodstream leading to increased blood sugar levels .
When blood sugar levels increase, your body releases insulin to balance it. Over time, this sugar spike can wear down the pancreas (the organ that makes insulin). This causes blood sugar levels to always be high, causing diabetes.
Eating fast food can increase calories, total fat , saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium, plus sugar from soft drinks, which can alter metabolic factors that increase the risk of heart disease due to increased body mass index and waist circumference, high triglycerides and levels of low-density lipoprotein – a form of good cholesterol.
Too much salt in fast food is also very dangerous for people with blood pressure diseases and damages blood vessels. It also increases the risk of heart failure, heart attack and stroke.
2. May increase the risk of liver disease
This is a result based on analysis of health data of 4,000 adults with fatty liver measurements included in a health and nutrition survey. Scientists have found that people with obesity or diabetes who get one-fifth or more of their daily calories from fast food have severely increased levels of fat in their livers compared to those who Eat little or no fast food.
“We were surprised to see that fast food can harm the liver, especially in the liver,” said Dr. Ani Kardashian, a hepatologist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and lead author of the study. people with diabetes or obesity. I think most people may not know that eating fast food and unhealthy diet can cause liver problems leading to cirrhosis (development of scar tissue in the liver), liver failure and liver cancer.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a condition in which excess fat accumulates in the liver, and is not related to alcohol use. This condition is more common in people with obesity or type 2 diabetes.
People with diabetes or obesity face potentially life-threatening liver damage due to a daily diet consisting of at least 20% fast food.
3. The reason people with diabetes or obesity are susceptible to liver disease
Dr. Kardashian explains that consuming large amounts of saturated fat and processed sweeteners from fast food causes the body to accumulate fat in the liver. This buildup is exacerbated in people with insulin resistance, a hallmark of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. This may be why people with diabetes and obesity are especially susceptible to the negative effects of fatty liver.
The findings are especially alarming given that fast food consumption has increased over the past 50 years, the researchers said. They hope this study encourages people to seek out more nutritious, healthful food options and provides information that clinicians can use to advise patients, especially those who have potential metabolic risk factors, about the importance of avoiding high-fat foods.
According to MSc. Dr. Nguyen Van Tien, National Institute of Nutrition, fast food often contains a lot of calories, a lot of fat, a lot of protein, lacks vitamins and minerals, so it often does not meet enough nutritional needs and is unbalanced in portion size. Therefore, if you use fast food for a long time and regularly, it will have a negative impact on your health and can lead to metabolic disorders.
If we use fast food, depending on the type (fast food rich in protein, high in starch, high in fat, high in salt), we should choose additional foods to add to the meal such as: green vegetables and fruits to increase vitamins and fiber while also helping to eliminate excess fat and reduce salt.
