Daffodil International University
Faculty of Allied Health Sciences => Pharmacy => Topic started by: Ferdous Khan on April 15, 2016, 08:55:28 PM
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Critics of the fast food industry have long warned about the perils of our addiction to processed food. Big Macs and Whoppers might taste good, but put too many of them in your body and it will expand as Violet Beauregard's did in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (although maybe not quite as fast). The evidence is decades in the making. The rise of processed food, after all, has coincided with an alarming growth in the size of our collective gut.
But there might be some new powerful ammunition for those who could do without the food the fast food industry serves.
Researchers at George Washington University have linked fast food consumption to the presence of potentially harmful chemicals, a connection which they argue could have "great public health significance." Specifically, the team found that people who eat fast food tend to have significantly higher levels of certain phthalates, which are commonly used in consumer products like soap and make-up to make them less brittle, but have been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes, including higher rates of infertility, especially among males.
The danger, the researchers believe, isn't necessarily a result of the food itself, but rather the process by which the food is prepared. The findings were published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal funded by the National Institutes of Health.
"We're not trying to create paranoia or anxiety, but I do think our findings are alarming," said Ami Zota, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University, and one of the study's authors. "It's not every day that you conduct a study where the results are this strong."
Fast food nation
In order to gauge how fast food affects the presence of certain non-natural chemicals, the team analyzed data for nearly 9,000 people, collected as part of federal nutrition surveys conducted between 2003 and 2010. The surveys included detailed information about the participants' diets, including what each had eaten in the last 24 hours. They also contained the results of urine samples taken at the same time, which allowed them to measure the levels of three separate chemicals.