We all know it’s unhealthy and fattening, but we eat it anyways. It’s all around us. Fast food.  Everyone’s happy place. Some fast foods are more fattening than you’d think. On the outside, they look just like anything else that you would eat, but look a little deeper and you’ll find that what you are consuming is much more harmful to your body than you think. If large amounts are consumed every day, fast food can have a great effect on your heart and body.

  As we all know, McDonald’s is not the healthiest thing to eat, but when you look at their salads you’d think, “Now I don’t have to be guilty about eating fast food.” But everything is not what it seems to be. McDonald’s Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken has 370 calories and 20g of fat. Any crispy chicken will make it unhealthy since “crispy” is just a fancy word for “fried”. Add in the bacon and you’ve got yourself a salad that isn’t really a healthy choice. You’d think that salads are the way to go in a healthy diet, but not this one.

  Key elements that you need to watch out for in fast food are things like sodium, fat, calories, and sugars. Sodium is the extra salt that isn’t needed in your body. We get our daily doses of sodium from the regular foods we eat daily like meats, nuts, grains, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products. Sodium is a part of a balanced diet, but too much can be unhealthy. Too much sodium can make the tissues in your body swell up and may be a contributor to high blood pressures.

  There’s a difference between the fat that our body needs and the fat that our body doesn’t need. Those two can get confusing so some people might think all the fat in fast foods are good for you, but they really aren’t. The fat that our body needs to store extra energy for later use is called unsaturated fat and the fat that is bad for our body and isn’t needed is called saturated fat. Saturated fat is what’s in all the unhealthy fast food that we eat.

  Everyone’s body is different from one another. So that means we each have our own amount of calories that we need every day. Calories give us energy, but eat too much and it can turn into extra energy and get turned into fat and fat make you gain weight and can lead to obesity, and I’m sure no one wants that.     

  The right amounts of these elements are good for you, but too much can be harmful. We all tend to go overboard and eat more than we need too and it can have its consequences. Just remember that what might seem the best is not always the best.