Watch more How to Understand Heart Disease videos: http://www.howcast.com/videos/512537-Why-Fast-Food-and-Soda-Are-Bad-for-Heart-Heart-Disease So how can fast food promote heart disease? In general, fast food makes all the wrong choices. Fast foods are high in saturated fasts, low in antioxidants, and have very little of the nutrients and minerals we need to have a healthy life. Fast foods are what we call empty calories. They really don’t have any of the heart-healthy factors in them. Those will be complex carbohydrates, nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that our body needs to perform at its best. More than that, fast foods can often have the things inside them which help promote atherosclerosis, or the buildup of cholesterol in the arteries of the heart, and can lead to things like heart attacks and stroke. In the United States, the consumption of fast food is very common. And unfortunately, we’re getting to an era where we’re seeing something we’ve never seen before. That is the emergence of a condition we call the obese malnourished where people are far overweight but are still malnourished in the sense of not having the important nutrients, vitamins, and minerals they need to live a healthy lifestyle. Fast food often also, subsidizes nature’s natural products and substances with unhealthy additives and preservatives. These have also been linked to adverse health effects, not only for cardiovascular health but also health in general. In addition to fast foods, soda is also a very unhealthy product. It has really high sugar and no basic minerals or nutrients that would make it healthy in any way. It allows us to really consume a lot of calories in a short period of time without thinking too much about what we’re taking in. It doesn’t have any of the health benefits that other calories may have, like complex carbohydrates, fresh vegetables, or fresh fruit. Most doctors would recommend avoiding sodas in general whether it’s diet or not. Sodas don’t have anything inside them which have any nutritional value and are in fact not really a food. Doctors would recommend drinking healthier drinks, mostly water whether it’s carbonated or flavored. Fast foods and soda are not part of a heart-healthy lifestyle and diet.