As appetizing as the word French fries sounds to you, they do have a negative impact on your health. They are not classified in the list of the healthiest food and one should definitely be cautious about not consuming them too much. Read on to find out why you and specifically your kids should not eat too much of this unhealthy snack.

French fries consists of harmful fats

Fried food is sure to satisfy your taste buds, but the saturated fat contained in potatoes is what triggers fatal diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart problems. Although fats also have a good category where they provide vegetable oils such as olive and sunflower oil that have positive effects on your health, the bad or saturated fats directly clog your arteries and do greater damage in comparison to the benefit.

These fats are usually found in everything that is partly hydrogenated such as vegetable shortening, margarine etc. They are also proven to increase bad cholesterol level or low-density lipoprotein.

As bad fats stay longer in the body, they tend to raise circulating blood triglycerides which lower the good cholesterol. Consuming these fats makes sticky platelets in your blood stream which forms clots that connect to the walls of arteries that supply oxygen and nutrition to the vital areas of your body. These clots form a wall of plaque which gradually leads to heart attack.

French fries comprise of the worst carbohydrates

A potato in its natural form is not harmful to you. It is how you choose to eat it that effects your health. Potatoes are made up of starch and simple carbohydrates.

Traditional French fries are made from white potatoes which have proven to be more easily convertible to sugar in the body. When your body takes in these fast absorbing carbohydrates, you are required to either use them as energy or store them in fat form. You are likely to gain weight from these potatoes if you do not consume their energy.

Continuously eating these quickly absorbing carbohydrates means high conversion of sugar, which causes an increase in the level of insulin production. This persistent rise in your insulin level makes you resistant to insulin which raises the probability of diabetes and heart disease.

Unfortunately, your kids are not an exception to these effects. Some people say that children need more of these carbohydrates and many nutritionists push towards consumption of whole grains, but in reality, such healthy grains are becoming difficult to find.

The idea of including whole grains in your children’s diet seems smart, but whole grains are difficult to convert to energy. They produce a slower supply of carbohydrates for the body.

French fries haveTrans fats!

Eating fried food means consuming Trans fatty acids that cause major heart diseases, cancer, bad cholesterol, and diabetes.

Damaged fats play the role of carcinogens in your body. French fries have high levels of acrylamide, which is said to be a possible cause of cancer.

Although there are not yet any proven results in children that show a link between eating French fried and cancer it is preferable to keep French fries out of the hands of your kids.