Fast foods has become a priority to many due to their accessibility and are not costly compared to other healthy foods.
By Mohammed Omar
Special for The Plu
To many people, fast food or junk food are the names they give to the alluring delicacies that are sold at joints in towns or mama nitilie in suburbs. Doctor Walidh Mohamed calls them fried foods because more often than not, they are all deep fried.
Dr. Walidh who works at the Aga Khan Hospital, Parklands, says for every food, the method of preparing will determine whether it’s healthy or unhealthy. He says that most of these fried foods contain fats which are absorbed during the preparatory process posing a danger of numerous diseases to the human body.
“The storage form of energy in the body is fat and accumulation of it in the body causes atherosclerosis, a disease that renders the blood vessels inefficient due to the fats deposits around the inner walls of the blood vessels which hinders the flow of blood to body organs.”
Fast foods become a priority to many due to their accessibility and are not costly compared to other healthy foods.
Unknown to many, this comes with a long term side effect to the body which leads to various diseases like stroke, heart attack, diabetes ,obesity among others .
Lifestyle diseases
Dr Walidh calls them lifestyle diseases because it is through one’s way of life and habits that can lead to such diseases.
“Anyone can get the lifestyle diseases regardless of their wealth status. A smoker from the slums can get the lifestyle diseases due to his smoking habits and the same can apply to any rich person,” he explains.
Junk food has a strong addictive nature and the more junk food one consumes, the less likely they are to consume the essential nutrients that the body relies on hence making it easy for the body to contract the lifestyle diseases. These lifestyle diseases are mostly caused by cheap junk foods but are very expensive to treat; a point that should raise an alarm to the lovers of junk food.
Rehema Buluma a resident from coast expresses her love for fast foods saying that they are delicious, cheap and easily available.
“I like fast foods because they help me save a lot of time which I use for other things” she told The plu
On a normal day, she would take mahamri and kaimati for her breakfast,chips and chicken for lunch,and mishakiki and viazi karai every evening on her way home before having rice with roasted chicken for supper.
Her physical structure of the body is a clear evidence that would convince anyone that she consumes more calories and uses less energy.
“I rarely walk because of the hot sun in our region, so I use tuktuk and matatu most of the time I go to work”
According to Dr Walidh, how children are brought up and the environment in which people live, are among the various reasons why junk foods become a priority for many.
In his 5 years as a doctor,Dr Walidh reveals that he has received a bigger number of youths and middle aged patients with lifestyle diseases compared to the elderly.
Going by Dr Walidh’s statistics, the youths are most likely to be the victims due to the new lifestyle habits they adopt and how the environment readily provides what they desire.
In Nairobi, the number of fast food joints is rapidly increasing at a very high rate with youths mainly from the universities and the working class flocking them every day .Some of the joints offer free extra packages on specific days mainly Tuesdays and Fridays to attract more customers and even offer free deliveries.
Others have adopted the 24/7 economy just to get more customers who can storm in the joints at any given time of day or night.
In the suburbs,the case is totally different and prices are much cheaper compared to urban centres.Chips mwitu is the name they give to the cheap chips which can go for even shilling five, fourteen times less costly than of town centers .
In his prescriptions, Dr Walidh encourages parents to feed their children with healthy foods so that when they grow up they make it a habit. He also recommended them to give their children a playing time which should be outdoors so that they utilize the calories in their bodies.
Quoting from the Award-winning Family Physician and Best-Selling Author Walt Larimore ,Dr Walidh gives his formula for good health (0, 5, 10, 30, 150) where 0 stands for no cigarettes or tobacco products, 5 five servings of fruits and vegetables per day ,10 ten minutes of silence, relaxation, prayer, or meditation per day ,30 keep your BMI (body mass index) below 30 ,150 number of minutes of exercise per week (e.g., brisk walking or equivalent)
