Association of Fast Food Intake as a Risk Factor of Coronary Heart Disease in Male Population of Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

Objective: To determine the association of fast food intake and development of coronary heart disease with middle-aged men due to the nature of their job and eating habits. Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted among middle-aged males working in a different professional environment. The duration of the study was from March-October 2019. The calculated sample size was 385 and a Non-probability convenient sampling technique was used to collect data. Only Men aged 35-60 years of age working in different professional setups were included. Data was collected through a pre-structured questionnaire. Data was entered and analyzed on IBM SPSS version 20. Results: Total 385 males were approached for the study. The response rate to the survey was 85% while the completion rate of the survey was 94.5%. The mean age was 44.89 ±7.58 years having an average BMI of 25.94±3.89kg/m2 . Out of these 311 men, 97.1% were a fast-food consumer. Fast food was more likely to be consumed by people who were doing a desk job than people whose nature was other than desk work (p=0.049). Among fast-food consumers, 40.7% had hypertension, 35.4% were obese, 22.5% had heart disease, and 21.9% had dyslipidemia. No significant association of heart disease (p=0.0689), obesity (p=1.00), hypertension (p=0.323) and dyslipidemia (p=0.213) was found with fast food consumption. Conclusion: Direct association between fast food and Coronary heart (CHD) disease is not significantly observed in the current study. However, dietary habits and the consumption of fast food have a profound effect on the development of predisposing factors of CHD. It is also concluded that long hours of desk job have a strong association with increased fast food intake due to its easy and quick availability within the short duration of time.

Keywords

• fast food
• coronary heart disease
• male
• desk-bound job