How Well Do You Know The Effects of Fried Foods?

It is quite sporadic to find someone who is not fond of eating fried foods. They are just too enticing and tempting. French fries, fried chicken, dough, wafers, grilled meat, etc. the list is too long. With such a wide variety of them, it is close to impossible to completely avoid these foodstuffs. With such a fast-moving life, most times, there is no option but just to go for these processed and fried, set to eat the items available in our market. If you talk about a country like India, almost every snack is to be fried.

Have you ever wondered what kind of impact these fried foods has on our body? You ought to have heard that “your food makes you.” What do you think these fried items will make from you? They are very dangerous! Yes! Dangerous, and makes you sick. The list is so long, but these few are the prominent Negative effects of these items on your health;

Prostate Cancer

Recent research studies have shown that oily foodstuffs can aggravate your chances of coming down with prostate cancer. When fry foods in hot oil, they undergo some chemical changes; some of these chemicals most times carcinogenic. Also, oil becomes a potential carcinogen when boiled. When you reuse the same oil you’ve used to fry, you become more prone to the prostate. It has been proved that men who eat fried foods up to three (3) times in a week are 35% more predisposed to prostate cancer.

Heartburn

Heartburn is commonly called acidity by people. This is just the actual acid reflux from your stomach back to the gullet, which is the upper part of your intestinal tract. The fried food remains in your gut for a more extended period since it takes a long period to break them down. Thus the gullet sphincter opens late. The acid production keeps rising and tends to start pushing the content upwards since the sphincter is closed. These actions cause a deadly burning sensation in ones’ mid-chest region. It might even result in vomiting.

Obesity

Well, you wouldn’t have to be Albert Einstein to detect that fried foods increase your body fat and make you obese. Our body is planned to store fat to serve the purpose of precious energy production for the body. But of course, nothing is good when taken in excess. When you take too much fried food, your body keeps storing more and more of the fat. Also, your body receives more of it but and utilizes less. With all that accumulated fat, you start appearing loaded, bulkier, and more decadent. Fried foods cause you to be obese and obesity, in turn, is the bedrock cause of many ailments we see around. So you have to be really cautious with your fat consumption.

Diabetes

It is not a crime if you believe that only sugar (carbohydrates) can lead to diabetes. It is just the most common misconception people nurse about diabetes. Diabetes Type II is the condition that arises when your body is unable to secrete sufficient level of insulin to breakdown the sugars. When this comes up, I would advise you to monitor your sugar consumption. But hope you know that the fatty foods you love eating are also broken down to give sugars in your body. Therefore, eating too many fries can alter your blood sugar level as well. You have to be cautious about your fat intake if you want to avoid diabetes.

Loaded With Calories

Should you compare deep frying to some other cooking methods, you’d find out more calories in the fried ones. That’s because fried foods are often coated with batter or flour; we fry them up. Also, the oil gradually replaces natural water as we go on with cooking processes, thus absorbing the fat and boosting the calorie count up.

Take, for example, The common baked potato contains up to 90 calories and 0grams of fats. The same amount of potato contains about 320 calories and an additional 17 grams of fat when fried, especially French fries. It’s undeniable that calorie levels get elevated and add up when food is fried.

Acne

This is the prominent and most common side effect of eating fried foods. If you have some acne on your face and are fed up with the skin irritation you get, just try to reduce the level of your fat intake the best you can. You will soon watch your face give you that desired radiant glow. Eating too much-fried food negates normal metabolism in our body. Acne development starts when there is excessive deposition of sebum on the skin. Taking excess of fried foods over-sensitizes the sebaceous glands, and they start to secrete in quantity more than required, which ultimately leads to blockage of the skin pores and thus resulting in eruptions.

Blood Pressure

One of the prominent health problems these days is often related to blood pressure. Abnormally high blood pressure is very risky. Whenever you think of fried foods, always remember to think about “excess spices, oil, salt, and sometimes preservatives, etc.” Excess intake of fat cells on your blood as it becomes dense than average. This gives a hard time for your heart to pump blood through the body. Secondly, all sodium-containing salts exert extra pressure on the heart, forcing it to pump more blood. If the use of salt and other condiments is not controlled, heart attacks may arise.

May Trigger Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a gastric problem wherein its victim suffers from severe abdominal pain and change from normal bowel motility. If you had ever suffered from vomiting or diarrhea just after some oily food items, you probably have experienced IBS. At times the excess intake of these fried food cause constipation; it is also a sign of IBS. If you experience this regularly, then you should hang up on oily foods. Oil consumption is a big bone of contention for individuals with weak digestion. Once you start showing signs of IBS, you must remain on strict diet consciousness forever. So consider it wise to limit your fat intake from now.

Arteriosclerosis

Arteriosclerosis is not a disease itself but may expose us to many blood-related disorders. It is the condition whereby either vein and/or arteries get hardened, slimmed, flattened, and loses its elasticity. These could be caused by high blood cholesterol levels due to an excessive intake of high cholesterol foods. The floating/excess cholesterol accumulates in your vessels and gradually blocks them. Cholesterol is derived from fatty acids in oils. So cut down on those tempting fried food which is full of deadly oil. Once the vessel is completely blocked, you would be left with an option to go through a Bypass surgery.

Lethargic

Lethargic is a health condition wherein you feel week and lazy. You might even feel low esteem and inadequate to do something. This is also a result of excessive fat intake. When the blood has an excess of fat, its oxygen-carrying strength is reduced. Your body gets a low supply of oxygen (O₂) needed to function well. With this limited oxygen (O₂) supply, the cell functioning gets disturbed. There you feel less strength and less concentration to perform your duties. Fried foods are more than able to make you lethargic within few days.

Gastritis

Gastritis, also known as enteritis, is the inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) lining. Fried foods are among the deadly causes of gastritis. Your intestinal lining releases a good number of chemicals and enzymes to complete digestion processes. When you consume foods with excess fat, you first expose a lot of workload on the adjoining digestive organs. Secondly, the fat molecule persists for quite a long period in your GIT than other contents. These may eventually lead to inflammation of the outer walls of digestive organs, it is indeed a painful and disturbing condition one should never think of having.

High in Trans Fats

Trans fats are formed when unsaturated fats get hydrogenated. Hydrogenated fats elevate shelf life and increase stability; this is why they are always found in highly processed foods. Hydrogenation may also transpire when oil is heated up to a high temperature (e.g., during the frying process).

Trans fats are highly dangerous to your health as they are not easily broken down and may predispose you to debilitating conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

All deep-fried foods are often prepared at high temperatures in any vegetable oil type; even the oils may have some trans fats in them. When oils are heated, the trans fat level gets increased.

Alternative Methods to Frying

Fried food may taste so good, but it is simply not worth eating. There are several other ways you can prepare your food without having to fry them at all. Not all oils are wholesome or healthy for you. If you must fry your food at all, you achieve this by using oils such as coconut or avocado oil.

Endeavor to avoid using oils from grape seed, soybean, rice bran, sesame, canola, corn, cottonseed, and sunflower.

Instead of frying your food, you may consider these healthier preparation methods:

• Oven-frying– You can also use your oven to bake foods and make them crispy at high temperatures without the use of oil.
• Hot air frying – Hot air frying methods are very popular because they offer an alternative and best way to deep frying. It works by circulating hot air around foods to make them crispy.

You need not keep to your deep frying method of preparing foods.