1. Mustafa Yorgun
20701797
ENG400-11
Negative Effects of Fast Food Habit Among University Students
Introduction
For university students the university life is the first step for real life. Most of these
students leave their home for education at first time in their life. Therefore they become more
dominant for their decisions. They think themselves as a free for everything. Before
university, they influenced by their family for their decisions and their families sometimes
became an inspection mechanism for their life. In university, they get rid of this
mechanism[1]. Therefore they started to try most of thing that forbidden by their families.
Their nutritional habits also one of the areas that changed by students in university. Students
started to eat fast food nearly every day. There are several reasons for this situation. They can
easily access fast food products, their cost is cheap and they are fast in terms of delivery.
However fast food products have many negative effects on health.
In this proposal it is intended to investigate the negative effects of fast food products
among university students and proposed some solution alternatives for these problems. After
introduction part, there will be a problem definition for fast food habit and proposition for
solution alternatives. Then, there will be criteria about solution alternatives and a
methodology for data requirements.
Problem Definitions
Fast food habit has many negative effects on human health and especially younger
people are more influenced by these effects. We can generalize these problems in two parts
like physical disease and psychological effects.
• Physical Diseases
Fast food products contain saturated fatty acid and high level of sodium. This
saturated fatty acid can cause some stomach diseases, heart problems and they can also
increase cancer risk[2]. High level of sodium is directly effective on stomach cancer and
hypertension. These products do not contain any vitamin. Therefore we can observe all

2. diseases connected to lack of vitamin. These are important health problems for young ages.
There is also a common disease dependent on fast food habit which name is obesity. Obesity
becomes great danger for university students. When they only eat fast food products, they can
not take other ingredients for body. This kind of one side eating habit caused to obesity.
Preparation of these products also causes some problems. Fast food restaurants sometimes use
same fat for long time and they roast them in improper ways. Because of these preparation
issues, even healthy foods become unhealthy products.
• Psychological Effects
University students frequently consume coke, coffee and tea. These products have
caffeine and high level of caffeine cause irritability, discomfort and aproxesia[3]. These
problems affect these students in their studies and they become unsuccessful and sometimes
get into depression.
Proposed Solutions
• Seminars for negative effects of fast food habit
Education is most important tool for preventing from negative effects of fast foods.
University is also a facility to educate people. Therefore we can arrange some seminars in
university campus. Students have some information about fast food habit but they are not
aware of the danger. In university, we can invite some dieticians or experts for fast food
habits. These people can show fast food products in every aspect and they can give us some
alternatives to eat healthy foods.
• Activities for motivating students for healthy foods
There can be some activities for promote healthy foods against of fast food products.
For example we can do a food contest and during this contest we can explain negative effects
of fast food products. We can also show that there are healthy foods and these foods are also
tasty and we can prepare them easily. We can also investigate some health organizations
promoting activities and we can apply them according to attract university students attention.

3. • Daily fruit salads in cafeterias
Fruits are extremely healthy foods but university students do not buy and eat them.
Generally university students do not want to spend time for prepare or even wash them. If we
attract students for buying fruit salads with preparing with good appearance, there will be an
alternative for fast eating for students. In dormitories, there are cafeterias and they also selling
fruit but students generally prefer fast food products. Therefore fruits can also be easy to eat.
Criteria
• Effectiveness
In order to attract attention for negative affects of fast food products, proposed
solutions should be effective on university students.
• Applicability
For successive proposed solutions, university students should accept these solutions. If
students do not accept the solution alternatives, they will be useless.
• Cost
Solution alternatives are requires some costs and these costs should be compensating
with income. Otherwise these alternatives can not be implemented.
Methodology
• Talking with a dietician for understanding negative effects of fast food products in more
deeply manner and he/she can give some interesting activities for promoting healthy
foods.
• A student survey can help to understand students’ fast food behavior. According to these
data solution alternatives can be consider in more accurately.
• Library and internet search also give information about negative effects of fast food
habits. These information combined with expert information for show that harmful effects
of fast food products.

4. References
[1] Mazıcıoğlu, MM. ve Öztürk A.(2003).”Üniversite 3 ve 4. Sınıf Öğrencilerinde
Beslenme Alışkanlıkları ve Bunu Etkileyen Faktörler”, Erciyes Tıp Dergisi (Erciyes
Medical Journal), 25 (4):172-178
[2] “Fast-food türü beslenmenin bize ne gibi zararı olabilir?” 20 March 2011
http://www.uzunhayat.net/saglik/fast-food-turu-beslenmenin-bize-ne-gibi-zarari-
olabilir.html
[3] “Zaman Gazetesi” 11 Dec 2008
http://e-psikoloji.com/forum/showthread.php?5996-Fast-food-t%FCr%FC-
beslenmenin-bize-ne-gibi-zarar%FD-olabilir