gareth said:This may seem like a dumb question but why do people say
fast food is bad for the body and exactly how is it bad
for the body. Is it the additives, the amount of fat, the
low fiber content?
There are many different types of fast food. Some provide
balanced nutrition, some don't. The mere fact that it is
"fast food" doesn't make it bad. That's a popular myth.
For example, some foods from McDonald's contain more fat and
sugar than you'd want in an ideal diet, but that doesn't
make them "bad," just a poor choice as a dietary staple
(i.e., you shouldn't live exclusively on Big Macs, for
example). Other foods from McDonald's are fine: the
standard, plain hamburger actually is a balanced meal, with
about equal amounts of protein, fat, and carbohydrates
(mostly starch).
It's fashionable to call all fast food "bad," without
further qualification, but it's not very accurate.
Quoted message said:I have a hunch that the main reason fast food gets a lot
of stick is because people eat too much of it, am I right?
Probably. It's easy to eat a lot of fast food (that's why
it's called fast food), and most fast food has more calories
than it appears to have. For example, a typical full Big Mac
meal of the kind I like doesn't seem like much (just a
hamburger, fries, and Coke), but it has about 1125 kcal,
which is very nearly my entire daily resting energy
requirement. So eating two of those a day would make me fat,
most likely, and even eating one a day consumes a very large
chunk of the total calories I can afford to eat. The meal
isn't intrinsically "bad," it's just higher in calories than
it looks to be--and so it's easy to eat too much.
Quoted message said:There seem to be alot of people who claim to be healthy
eaters and yet snack on fast food for time to time.
There is no conflict between the two.
Quoted message said:Isn't this the same thing as people who smoke on the odd
occasion.
Almost, although smoking is unconditionally damaging even in
the smallest amounts, whereas fast food is simply a bit less
ideal than regular food.
Quoted message said:Is it the content of the food or the amount that people
eat which makes it bad for you?
For most people, it's the amount that causes problems, and
that's why obesity is widespread. Very few people are
suffering true malnutrition in developed countries. Their
main problem is just that they eat too much of _everything_,
fast food and otherwise.
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