Why You Shouldn’t Eat Fried Food
We all know the allure of the familiar smell of fried foods as you walk by the local fish and chip shop or the unmistakeable aroma of big burger chains. Delicious but deadly, fried foods are strongly linked to heart disease and stroke. And we have new research to support this!
A new 2021 study from China found that the risk of these deadly chronic diseases rises with every 113 g serve per week! That’s just one cheeseburger! So your weekly takeaway night could easily be causing your heart serious long term damage.
In this study, researchers combined data from 17 studies, involving more than 560,000 people with nearly 37,000 major cardiovascular events, such as heart attack or stroke. The study findings showed that compared with people who ate the lowest amount of fried food per week, those who ate the highest amount had a 28% greater risk of major cardiovascular events, a 22% higher risk of heart disease and a 37% higher risk of heart failure. And, for those who ate fried food more than once a week, these risks increased by 3%, 2% and 12%, respectively, with each additional 113 g weekly serving.
Could this information be relevant for you? Maybe you do a drive through to pick up breakfast or lunch on the go? We can easily forget the frequency of such exposures, unless we regularly record them in a food diary.
While the exact mechanisms of how fried foods cause heart disease and stroke are not fully understood yet, several risks stand out.
1. Processed fats and too many animal foods
Many studies have found that plant based dietary patterns have a protective effect against stroke, whereas Westernized eating patterns, particularly those including more animal foods, processed fats and added sugars, have a detrimental effect. For example, African-Americans are five times as likely to die from a stroke in middle age. In this population, it is thought that a ‘Southern-style diet’, characterized by a lot of fried foods and meat, may play a role in increasing their risk of stroke, whereas eating a more plant-based diet lacking in such fried foods could help reduce their (and everyone’s) stroke risk.
2. Not enough protective plant foods
After World War II, nutrition scientist Professor Ancel Keys was impressed by the low rates of heart disease in Greece and initiated his famous Seven Countries Study. He and his team found that the rate of fatal heart disease on the Greek Island of Crete was up to 20 times lower than in the United States! Residents from this island at the time also had the lowest cancer rates and fewest deaths overall compared to men from 15 other populations representing seven countries from four regions of the world (US, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Japan). So what were they eating? They consumed a traditional Mediterranean style diet, which characteristically includes no ultraprocessed and fast food, very little meat and is more than 90% plant based, which goes a long way to explain why heart disease was such a rarity. The superior nutrition quality of unprocessed plant food meals (high in fibre and rich in multiple antioxidants) provides protection for a healthy heart and blood vessels.
3. Frying creates inflammatory by-products
Fried foods can contain harmful trans fatty acids from hydrogenated vegetable oils, and frying also increases the production of various chemical by-products that fast forward inflammatory reactions within your body. For example, Advanced Glycation Endproducts are formed when fish and potato are turned into fish and chips rather than being steamed or stewed. And, many fried and processed snacks foods (even if they are labelled as vegan or organic) will deliver acrylamide to your mouth, which is also known to be proinflammatory. The problem is that inflammation in your body drives many chronic diseases, including cancer and heart disease.
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