The Shocking Truth About Takeaway Food

Takeaway food, particularly the ever-so-delicious doner kebabs, chicken kormas or garlic bread pizzas, are among modern life's little guilty pleasures. We regard them as dangerous for our weight, but often tell ourselves that if we only have them once or twice every couple of weeks, they are unlikely to cause too much damage. A recent study conducted in Britain is likely to drastically change our rather lenient perspective on takeaway fast food and its impact on our overall state of health. But beware - once you've read this, you're likely to never look at a doner kebab the same way, ever again.

The study in question found that a 400g serving of doner kebab can contain as much fat as a wine glass of cooking oil and usually contains no less than 139.3g of fat - which is twice as much as the recommended daily maximum fat intake for a woman. A chicken korma (a mild curry dish made with yogurt or coconut milk for added creaminess) was shown to contain 95.4g of fat, while a medium pizza with garlic bread contained 81.5g of fat. In fact, about 86% of the meals reviewed by this study were found to be extremely rich in fat and salt, making them extremely serious threats for all of us.

"If this kebab weighs 400g, the fat content is a quarter of the meal. That, on its own, gives you 1,000 calories - equivalent to a wine glass of cooking oil. The majority of that fat is saturated so it's going to raise your cholesterol and give you thickening of your arteries. If you were eating that meal twice a week on top of your ordinary diet, it's a ticking time bomb of coronary heart disease", said Denise Thomas, head of nutrition and dietetics at Portsmouth Hospitals Trust.

Another danger comes from the fact that the damage caused by the high fat and salt intake builds up over time and does not show immediately, therefore people are unlikely to realize just how bad this type of diet is for them. "The older or more inactive you are, the more likely it is you won't clear it from your system", Denise Thomas explained. If you eat lots of fruit and vegetables, then you're not as exposed as if you were keen on eating lots of calorific fried foods at home, too.

"If you're eating pie and chips and fried breakfasts as well, you're heading towards a heart attack within ten years", Thomas warned. The conclusion is simple: takeaway food is bad news and we should avoid it at all times, or if that's impossible, at least try to balance the occasional kebab with eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables every day to counteract the effects of the saturated fat buildup.

A Meatless Diet Of Veggies Can Reduce Risk Of Colorectal Cancer

A study has linked a vegetarian diet to a lowered risk of colorectal cancers when compared to data on nonvegetarians, researchers are reporting.

An emphasis on screening tests has gone a long way in battling colorectal cancers -- the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. following lung cancer -- but primary prevention through the lowering of risk factors is still seen as a vital consideration, experts say.

In a study by Michael J. Orlich of Loma Linda University in California, Orlich and his research colleagues identified 380 cases of colon cancer and 110 cases of rectal cancer in 77,659 study participants.

An analysis of the dietary habits of the participants showed that, compared with nonvegetarians, those on a vegetarian diet had a had an average 22 percent lower risk for all colorectal cancers, broken down as a 19 percent lower risk for colon cancer and 29 percent lower risk for rectal cancer.

"Our vegetarians not only ate less meat than the non-vegetarians, but also less sweets, snack foods, refined grains and caloric beverages," Orlich says, noting that in addition they consumed more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and beans.

Previous studies have linked red meat and processed meats to elevated risks of colorectal cancer, he says.


Although studies including Orlich's have shown an association between a vegetarian diet and a lowered risk of colon cancer, it is unknown what the causal relationship might be, if one even exists, experts say.

It is not certain whether there is some protective quality in vegetables or whether there are more harmful qualities in meat, says Dr. Alfred Neugut, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

One unexpected finding is that risk factors are even lower for those vegetarians who include fish and seafood in their diets.

"We were surprised to find that pescovegetarians had a significantly lower risk of colorectal cancers than people on other vegetarian diets," Olich notes.

Pescovegetarians who ate fish at least once a month and meat less than once a month, had the biggest risk reduction of 43 percent, the researchers found.

In comparison, lacto-ovo vegetarians who consumed eggs and dairy while limiting fish and meat to less than once a month saw a risk reduction of 18 percent, while vegans who ate eggs, dairy, fish, and meat less than once a month had a 16 percent reduction in colorectal cancer risk.

"The comforting takeaway is that a person doesn't need to be vegan and cut out all eggs, dairy, and fish to get some benefit in terms of reducing the risk of cancer," says Dr. Leonard Saltz, chief of the gastrointestinal oncology service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Why We're Always Hungry

We're a country of people who never stop eating. The freedom to eat anytime and anywhere is convenient, but it also means you may be mindlessly inhaling hundreds of extra calories without even realizing it.

With so much food constantly in our face, it's no wonder that many of us are grazing all day long. Americans eat an average of 570 calories more per day than they did in the 1970s, largely due to constant eating, according to research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "People have snacks with them at all times -- in their car, at their desk, in their purse," says study coauthor Barry Popkin, PhD. "We don't even know what hunger feels like anymore."

The health consequences aren't pretty. Think about it: Every time you load up on empty-calorie snacks, it means you're not eating foods that provide vital nutrients to give you energy (complex carbs), help you feel full (protein, fiber), and help prevent disease (a whole range of vitamins and minerals). Chronic snacking can also make it harder to lose weight.

The Psychology of Mindless Eating

Snacking isn't inherently bad; the problem is that we're not doing it right. "If people were reaching for real food with fiber, it would fill them up," Popkin points out. Instead, we tend to munch on sweet, high-carb snacks -- some of which contain nearly as many calories as a meal. These foods throw off your hunger cues big time, since they give you a quick sugar rush, then make you crash a short time later. The result? You crave another hit of the sweet stuff to feel better, and the cycle repeats itself.

The fact that snacks are available everywhere doesn't help either, because now it's socially acceptable to eat no matter where you are: walking down the street, waiting in line at the post office, during meetings, on planes, trains, and automobiles. This is mindless eating at its sneakiest. "It's a combination of a lack of awareness and environmental triggers," says Michelle May, MD, the author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle. "The car wash is boring. There's a rack of candy bars -- suddenly, there's something enjoyable to do!"

These food-place associations are what Cornell University eating behavior expert Brian Wansink, PhD, calls "mindless eating scripts" -- those moments throughout the day when we eat out of habit, not hunger. "The most common one is eating on the way to work or on the way home," Wansink explains. "These scripts get reinforced by repetition."

Maybe your script is a doughnut on the way to work or a pack of cookies on the way home -- fillers between real meals that don't fill you up but will make you fat. And there's no denying that these foods can make you feel good. "We're wired neurologically to crave food that's high in fat, salt, and sugar," explains David Kessler, MD, author of The End of Overeating. "Snacks like ice cream and potato chips taste good but they also activate the pleasure centers in our brains."

Sometimes that blissful feeling becomes connected to a happy memory, says Dr. Kessler, which may give a particular food a powerful emotional appeal. That explains my relationship with soft-serve ice cream: Yes, it's delicious, but it also reminds me of those special days with my mom.

People also connect snacks to specific places where they simply have to have that food. Some associations are the result of conditioning -- think popcorn at the movies and hot dogs at a baseball game -- while others develop seemingly out of nowhere. I polled my friends and family, who sheepishly admitted their own strange links between a particular snack and place. Lavetta buys Twizzlers whenever she goes to FedEx. "It gives me something to do while I'm waiting in line," she says. My sister Amanda gets a pack of cupcakes at gas stations. And Diane always picks up a bag of cheese-filled pretzels at airports. "I have to fly a lot for work and I won't get on the plane without them," she says. "It's a habit I've had for years -- and I have no idea how it even started."

Afraid to Be Hungry

The first step toward breaking the cycle of mindless eating is to ask yourself, Am I really hungry right now? Because chances are, you're not. "Our bodies are designed to exist among scarcity, but we're constantly surrounded by food," says Dr. May. "As a result, we've learned to ignore what it means to feel full. We're choosing food for pleasure but then not eating in a way that gives us pleasure -- walking down the hallway or scarfing it down in the car."

I've certainly experienced this phenomenon, which happens a lot now that I have a 17-month-old daughter, Bella. Like most new moms, I'm busy and tired all the time so I'm putting less thought into what, where, and when I eat. I find myself grabbing a muffin (my second breakfast) at the shop conveniently located next to the subway on the way to appointments in the city. I crave a sweet snack around 4:00 in the afternoon as well -- not necessarily because I'm hungry but because it's soothing. And for the five minutes it takes to inhale a double-fudge brownie on my walk home to relieve the babysitter, I do feel better. But just a short time later I'm my old exhausted self again.

Since our impulses and cravings are so often unconscious, the step toward changing them is to make them conscious. "If you look at a bag of chips and see that it's filled with fat and salt, and then think, 'That isn't going to sustain me,' you can change how you value those chips," says Dr. Kessler. When Dr. May has a craving for a cookie or candy bar, she thinks about whether an apple would satisfy her instead. "If I'm really hungry, it will," she says. But sometimes, she ends up deciding that she does want the cookie -- and that's okay, too.