Fast Food Facts

Going through the compilation of fast food facts given below will tell you exactly why fast food is considered to be harmful for your health. Continue reading for more information on nutritional value of fast food ingredients.

French fries and burgers are mouthwatering indeed, but whether they healthy is a question that you need to seriously think about. Those people who resort to fast food on a daily basis are either totally ignorant about the ingredients used in preparation of these food items or they blindly trust their advertisements which exaggerate the nutritional value of various products. Irrespective of what the actual reason is, one thing which is more than obvious is an average American's craving for fast food. Approximately 25 percent of the American population resorts to fast food on a daily basis. If you are one of them, you need to get updated about the harmful effects of fast food as soon as possible. Before we move on to unhealthy fast food facts, let's see some general facts about the fast food industry and the trend of fast food consumption in the United States.

Fast Food Facts and Statistics

McDonald's, Burger King, You! Brands, KFC... the list of fast food outlets in the United States is pretty lengthy. No wonder, people are so used to burgers and French fries - which they can eat for breakfast, lunch as well as dinner. While the billion dollar American fast food industry thrives on this very fact, you as a consumer need to know some facts about the industry as well. Given below are some of them.

In the United States alone, people spend a whopping $100 billion on fast food every year, which is almost 40 times than what was spent in 1970s.

The largest fast food industry in the world - the American fast food industry employs approximately 2 million individuals.

In India, the fast food industry experienced a growth of 41 percent in 2006 and a large part of the credit for this does to the entry of bigwigs like McDonald's and KFC in the Indian market.

A look at fast food facts in America reveals that one third of the American children eat fast food on any given day.

Fast foods are typically characterized by high calorie content, and thus consumption of such foods tends to promote weight gain and increases the risks of health issues associated with it.

Several studies have revealed that fast foods cause insulin levels in the body to rise, and this in turn increases the risk of type 2 diabetes.

In order to avoid wastage of potato shreds left from French fries production, the producers began to produce hash brown from it - today it is one of the most popular food item in any fast food outlets.

Fast Food Nutrition Facts

If you thought that gross fast food facts only revolve around raw meat and unhygienic conditions, you need to think again. Did you know that eating a corn muffin at the McDonald's will result in more calorie intake than eating a glazed donut. Given below are some fast food nutrition facts which will tell you how many calories you consume when you resort to fast foods.

Irrespective of whether it is served in some big restaurant or some non-franchisee outlet, fast foods are loaded with a range of unhealthy ingredients, including fats, sugar, salt and various preservatives.

Chicken nuggets available at these fast food outlets are more of corn and less chicken (a 60:40 ratio to be precise), and mind you this is the same corn which is fed to the cattle in order to make them look more healthy and plump.

A Double Whopper with cheese at Burger King contains more than 900 calories. In order to burn this amount of calories, you will have to walk for 9 miles.

Some of these fast food manufacturers resort to artificial trans-fats, which are way more harmful as compared to their natural counterparts.

The fast food nutrition guide reveals that a normal serving of French fires is loaded with 4-7 gm of trans-fats. If health experts are to be believed consuming more than 2 gm of trans-fat a day can be harmful for our health.

While everybody knows that fast foods are high in calories, what most of the people don't know is that fact that most of these calories are derived from sugar and thus are quite harmful for health.

In course of preparation, fast foods go through a great deal of processing in which most of the essential nutrients are lost and by the time they reach your plate they become more of 'fats foods' than 'fast foods'.

Those were some lesser known fast food facts intended to shed light on various fast food problems which you need to be aware of. While the relationship between fast food and obesity needs no introduction, there are several other health issues which are associated with this food. Now that you are well aware of all these junk food facts, the next thing to do is to stop eating fast food and shift bases to a healthy diet.