Junk Food and its Effects on Kids' Health

Fast foods can be healthy as per their originality and cook’s skills. However, these days, they are considered almost same as junk foods that look attractive and are alluring in taste but are laden with harmful calories without any significant nutritional value. While healthy fast foods like soy burgers and salads are fine for a nutritious diet, there are unhealthy fast foods or junk items like commercially sold burgers and candies that are bound to harm the health of the consumers, especially kids. This is because kids are the highest victims of these foods because of its appealing look and taste, which are simply difficult to control. However, this difficult to control factors enforce too frequent consumption of junk foods featuring extra calories resulting into obesity and other grave ailments.

Junk items such as pastries, sodas, cold drinks, and burgers increase the levels of sugar in blood in kids. As a result, this increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney damage, and dementia. Further, these foods have saturated fats that end up increasing the cholesterol level. This effect is notorious for causing different heart problems or cardiac disorders.

Processed foods such as chips are also junk foods that contain too much salt. Although they are very delectable, excess but irreplaceable sodium or potassium is the major culprit for hypertension. Such a disorder about blood pressure can trigger a grave inhibitory effect on growth. Another big problem is that kids get addicted very quickly to these junk foods. As a result, they find it difficult to adjust to other dishes that are healthier. For example, they just cannot imagine themselves eating fresh fruits and green vegetables that are required for the growing kids. However, at the same time, their lack in daily meals results in nutritional deficiency. For example, it can lead to iron deficiency that results in anaemia when, in combination of extra saturated fats and sugars, can weaken the body as well as invite lethargy. 

Further, the deficiency of other macro- and micro-nutrients damages the immune system due to which the kids become highly vulnerable to a myriad of chronic ailments. For example, deficiency of calcium harms teeth, nails and bones as well. 

Above all, obesity is the biggest effect of junk foods, which reflexively promotes a sedentary lifestyle because an obese kid cannot participate in physical activities. This is perhaps due to the discomfiture due to own obesity, which forces a kid to become isolated.