Frequent consumption of frozen ready-to-eat food such as pizza, lasagne, nuggets, and burgers can bring several health hazards, such as increased blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol.
This is because these foods are high in salt, sugar, saturated fat and chemicals to enhance the flavor and preserve food for longer. See below the main problems that these products bring to health.
1. Gain weight
In general, frozen ready-to-eat food is very rich in calories, leading to weight gain and lack of control of body fat. Even small portions of this type of food have high caloric concentration, and do not bring satiety to the intestine, which causes the individual to eat more and more times.
2. Increased blood pressure
Ready-made foods like lasagne, nuggets, powdered soups, instant noodles and diced spices are high in sodium, a salt compound that is primarily responsible for the rise in blood pressure.
A portion of 300 g of lasagne, for example, has more than 30 percent of all the salt an adult can eat each day, while a cube of meat seasoning has twice the salt that an adult can eat all day. Thus, it is easy to exaggerate salt when consuming processed products, which increases the risk of developing high blood pressure.
3. Increased cholesterol
In addition to salt, these products are high in saturated fat, which is primarily responsible for raising bad cholesterol and reducing good cholesterol. This increases the risk of developing problems such as atherosclerosis, which is the clogging of blood vessels by fat plaques, liver fat, heart attack and stroke.
4. Diabetes
Another common feature of ready-made foods is that they are rich in sugar, an ingredient widely used to enhance the taste of preparations and increase and leave the consumer addicted to sweet taste.
However, excessive sugar consumption increases the risk of developing diabetes, especially in people with a history in the family of this disease.
5. Bowel problems and cancer
Due to the high content of chemicals such as preservatives, flavorings, dyes and flavor enhancers, frequent consumption of these foods can also lead to health problems such as irritation in the stomach, colon cancer, headache, tingling, kidney stones, nausea and reduced absorption of vitamins in the gut.
In addition, food additives such as monosodium glutamate leave the taste buds addicted to the artificial taste of food, which causes increased consumption of this type of product. See Chemical additives are most dangerous to health and in what foods they are.
How to reduce industrialized consumption
To reduce the consumption of processed foods and the dangers they bring to health, one should prefer to consume foods in their natural form, such as rice, beans, fresh meat, milk, cheese, yogurt, fruits and vegetables. In addition, it is important to use natural spices to flavor food such as garlic, onion, basil, pepper, parsley and oregano.
Industrialized products should be avoided, especially for children, the elderly and people with health problems such as diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol. In this way, it is possible to have a more natural diet and with less fat and chemical additives, which also helps in controlling weight and preventing various diseases.
