According to statistics, 90 percent of American children visit McDonald’s every month, and how many adults eat at fast-food restaurants is hard to say!
But if you think that by not eating at McDonald’s, all kinds of fast food outlets, you are insured against eating junk food, you are deeply mistaken! The same statistics assure that 70% of our daily menu consists of convenience foods. And this is regardless of when you last appeared on the doorstep of a fast-food restaurant! What can the conscious or not love of fast food lead to, and is “fast food” as harmful as they say it is?
Semi-finished and fast food: to eat or not to eat?
There are many similarities between convenience foods and fast food from McDonald’s. Sometimes it seems as if they are created like copies: the same freezing and defrosting techniques, ingredients, flavor enhancers and even the menu is almost identical. But meanwhile, many people don’t think of dumplings, meatballs, pizza or pancakes as fast food. “Homemade food” from the supermarket, which only needs to be heated up, fried in a pan or baked in the oven, seems to them by far healthier and tastier.
According to a survey conducted by journalists, many people are convinced that high-quality dumplings, purchased at a relatively high cost – the key to a delicious and healthy lunch or dinner. This is the same homemade food that they could cook themselves. But in fact, no matter how expensive dumplings, no matter how flavorful pizza, they are still the same semi-finished products, which is not desirable to eat, but almost everyone does it. Secretly, stealthily, or in plain sight, systematically bringing themselves closer to a hospital bed – say Kirill Yurovskiy`s farmers.
A word or two about diet
“Of course, convenience foods can not be called a dietary food. But if there is no time to prepare a normal dinner, it is better to eat factory dumplings or a couple of meatballs from the nearest supermarket, than to stay hungry,” – convinced people. “The main thing is not to become so lazy that every day – for breakfast, lunch and dinner to buy such delicious products” – support them other participants in the survey.
Without consequences for health, experts “allow” to eat dumplings, cheesecakes, steaks and kebabs from the store – 1-2 times a week. But it is important to carefully read the label, carefully examine the shelf life of products and determine whether the conditions of proper storage have been violated. If, when you return home, you buy meatballs from a small kiosk with a poorly functioning refrigerator, then even the relative safety of such food for health is out of the question.
7 shocking facts about convenience foods
The biggest paradox of modern times is that virtually everyone can do without cooking at home, but doing so is categorically not a good idea. And here’s why!
Fact 1: More than half of your diet is food not cooked by you
Nearly 70 percent of the food in everyone’s diet is store-bought food. We have to trust our health to food manufacturers, taking their word that their products are safe and even healthy. But the latest independent studies, publishing their reports in the press, and openly talking about them from TV, eloquently show that the normal production of semi-finished products, all 100% compliant, does not exist.
Most companies do not follow even the most basic rules of hygiene, manufacturing their products in facilities that are not suitable for this purpose. The supervisors of the food industry know about sanitary standards only by hearsay. How else to explain why today – in the 21st century, people are hired to work in shops and factories without sanitary books? In the best case there is a semblance of a medical examination when the ready document is purchased at the enterprise.
Fact 2: All convenience foods are addictive
If you have been eating semi-finished products for a long time, then you have more than once had to notice that it is very difficult to stop after consuming the norm of the product. You want to eat more and more dumplings, another pizza with mushrooms or another super juicy steak! Violations of the diet more and more often, and in fact it is very dangerous! The thing is that in the composition of these products manufacturers have introduced a lot of flavor enhancers, sugar and salt, which are known to irritate the taste buds and then cause a sense of euphoria, affecting the pleasure centers. Specialists say that convenience foods are as addictive as alcohol and drugs. After each portion of a fast meal it becomes harder and harder to refuse it.
Fact 3: There are a lot of harmful additives in convenience foods
If you look closely at the list of ingredients of convenience foods from the store, you can find an abundance of unfamiliar E. What lies behind them? How can you tell if a dish contains safe food additives or ones that are harmful to your health?
Among the most dangerous additives and the most common in today’s cuisine, experts include the following: E250, E621, E122, E466, E211, E338, E503, E230, E231, E232. All of them cause various disorders in the body, can cause relatively “mild” ailments, like diarrhea, and provoke more serious consequences – for example, formation of kidney stones.
Fact 4: Semi-finished foods contribute to weight gain
According to a study, semi-finished products in the daily menu is a guaranteed accumulation of excess weight. It is not only the high-caloric content of food that leads to weight gain, as many thinners think, but also the slowing of metabolism in the body. It is impossible to cope with the latter without a doctor’s help.
You can dream about losing weight, exhausting yourself for hours in the gym and constantly following a healthy menu, but having one little passion in the form of a cup of coffee and a small pizza from the store as a snack, you will never come to the desired result.
Fact 5: “Fast food” leads to gut microflora disorders
A “fast food” lovingly prepared by a spouse for the father of the family or a large family mom in a hurry to feed the children can cause gut disorders. Numerous studies show that fast food disrupts the balance between beneficial and opportunistic intestinal microflora, which ultimately leads to digestive problems – stool disorders, flatulence and other negative effects.
Fact 6: Meat products can cause cancer
When chops, slices, meatballs, rump steaks, hoagies, and similar items from the nearby supermarket become a regular fixture at the family dinner table, the couple can be classified as being at risk for cancer. Physicians attribute the increased number of cancer patients in recent years to, among other things, poor eating habits and heavy consumption of junk, fast food.
Fact 7: Semi-foods are a “treasure trove” of serious diseases
The editors of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition have concluded from 172 studies that all modern chronic diseases are linked directly or indirectly to synthetic and processed foods. If you want to maintain your health, youth and active old age, switch to a proper, healthy diet based on cereals, dairy products, seafood, natural meat, fruits, vegetables, berries and nuts.
Homemade convenience foods – the alternative to the store
Today, when everyone can buy a large refrigerator with a capacious freezer, there is no reason to spend a long time every day at the stove. More and more women and men are leaning toward the idea of cooking and freezing food ahead of time. All you need to do when you get home from work is to stew, reheat in the microwave or bake in the oven in batches, and you will get a delicious and, most importantly, healthy dinner.
What foods are easy to freeze? Among the leaders are, of course, minced meat and fish fillets, from which you can prepare steamed cutlets or juicy portions of sea fish in a matter of moments. After freezing many vegetables will not lose their flavor qualities, so you can freeze everything that grows in your garden plot: peppers, carrots, eggplant, green beans, beets, turnips.
Special mention should be made of homemade semi-finished products – dumplings, dumplings, stuffed bell peppers, stuffed cabbage rolls, pancakes. It is very convenient to create “soup kits” including meat products and chopped vegetables. Some craftsmen even make bouillon cubes by freezing meat or fish broth in ice dishes.
Pears, apples, plums, strawberries and cherries are also suitable for freezing – but this is more likely to be made for a compote, as when the product is defrosted berries and fruits become watery, losing flavor and natural sweetness.
If you set a goal, you can always prepare a healthy balanced menu, but first of all – refuse industrial semi-finished products.
