Why you should watch your intake of fast foods

These days many people eat fast foods, no thanks to busy schedules to make ends meet.

Though considered the favourite menu of people in the western world, it is fast gaining ground here in Nigeria. Common fast foods include; fish roll, egg roll, meat pie, chips, sandwiches, hamburgers, fried chicken, spring roll, samosa, pizza, hot dogs, ice cream, and salads.

These foods are said to be highly processed and contain large amounts of carbohydrates, added sugar, unhealthy fats and sodium and calories. They are almost always high in calories while offering little in the way of nutrition

A recent study led by the University of Bonn revealed that consumption of fast foods makes the immune system more aggressive in the long term as the immune system reacts similarly to a high fat and high calories diet to bacterial infection.

The scientists stated that unhealthy food seems to make the body’s defenses more aggressive in the long term, even long after switching to a healthy diet, inflammation toward innate immune stimulation is more pronounced.

“These long-term changes may be involved in the development of arteriosclerosis and diabetes, diseases linked to fast foods intake,” said Prof. Dr Eicke Latz, director of the Institute for Innate Immunity of the University of Bonn.

“It has only recently been discovered that the innate immune system has a form of memory in which after an infection, the body’s defenses remain in a kind of alarm state, so that they can respond more quickly to a new attack. Experts call this “innate immune training.”

The scientists examined blood cells from 120 subjects and identified the responsible “fast food sensor” in immune cells with findings of genetic evidence of the involvement of a so-called inflammasome.

He said: “Inflammasomes are key intracellular signaling complexes that recognize infectious agents and other harmful substances and subsequently release highly inflammatory messengers. The activation by fast foods change the way in which the genetic information is packaged. The immune system consequently reacts even to small stimuli with stronger inflammatory responses.”

The scientists stated that these inflammatory responses can in turn accelerate the development of vascular diseases or type 2 diabetes.

“In arteriosclerosis for example, the typical vascular deposits, the plaques, consist largely of lipids and immune cells. The inflammatory reaction contributes directly to their growth, because newly activated immune cells constantly migrate into the altered vessel walls.

“When the plaques grow too large, they can burst, leading to blood clotting and are carried away by the bloodstream and can clog vessels. Possible consequences: Stroke or heart attack,” Prof. Dr Latz said.

Their findings further revealed that wrong nutrition can have dramatic consequences making individuals born today to live on average shorter lives than their parents. “Unhealthy diets and too little exercise likely play a decisive role in this,” he added.

Dr Latz who said these findings have important societal relevance, advised that the foundations of a healthy diet need to become a much more prominent part of education than they are at present, adding that only this way can we immunize children at an early stage against the temptations of the food industry.

“Children have a choice of what they eat every day. We should enable them to make conscious decisions regarding their dietary habits,” he added.