Some foods are bad for you even just once a week

Food can be the safest form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. Katie Thoma picks her poison every three weeks.

“I don’t want to sit in a restaurant and wait an hour. You can sometimes pick healthy choices. They have the calories up there. But, it’s not he best option, I agree,” Katie Thoma said.

We all know a lot of fast food is bad for you, but you’d be surprised to know how little it takes to have negative affects on your health. A new study shows eating fast food just once a week increases your risk of heart disease by 20 percent.

“It’s only one meal a week, but 50 meals a year,” Amit Katz, owner of Lifestyles Nutrition, said.

Another study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows one soda a week can increase your risk of Type 2 diabetesby 33 percent.

Yet another study shows bad health affects from just one bag of chips a week.

“You get that one meal a week, that saturated fat, and throw it off into the system. It’s going to end up as plaque.Then it oxidizes, which further contributes to a decline in your health,” Katz said.

Thoma doesn’t see the harm of making the drive through a fast food drive thru.

“What if you’re eating something you would make at home but it’s easier? I just got turkey and tomato on whole wheat bread. I’d make that at home,” she said.

Thoma added that what you order makes the difference.

“You can go to a wonderful healthy restaurant and have something loaded with salad dressing and you’re in just as bad shape as if you bought something from fast food,” Thoma said.

There’s a lot of unsaturated fat and unrefined sugar in most fast food, so choose wisely.

“You take all that saturated fat, put it on a scale, you’re asking your body for something it may or may not be able to do which is deal with all that saturated fat, deal with all that that refined sugar,” Katz said.

So, when your stomach craves fast food, keep your body in mind.