Students at Manitou Springs High School rely on fast food for a quick and reliable meal option. Most students realize that it is an unhealthy option but still choose fast food for convenience.

According to the National Library of Medicine, eating an excess amount of fast food has been associated with an increased risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer later into adulthood. 

While not only harming the body physically, studies have shown that the Western Diet, a diet characterized by pre packaged food, processed meats, and sugary drinks, which is the average order at a fast food restaurant, has impacted brain function and suggested a link to lower capacity of memory and learning.

Athletic Trainer and Sports Medicine teacher at MSHS Jimmy Morin also mentioned fast food can impact school performance. “If you eat it at lunch, you’re gonna crash at the end of the day,” Morin said. “You need good carbohydrates to sustain you and to keep your brain alive and awake to help you study.”

When the body has more simple carbohydrates or sugar than its used to it rapidly produces insulin to keep the levels consistent. In turn this causes the blood glucose to decrease, this then results in hypoglycemia or a sugar crash. In order to keep energy levels up throughout the day the focus should be put on complex carbohydrates such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grain products such as rice and pasta.

Head football coach and health teacher at MSHS Stu Jeck puts a really big priority on nutrition in his health classes. “We have a whole unit on nutrition, and most of that is designed around building a healthy lifestyle in regards to what you eat,” Jeck said. “It’s a big portion of class, in my opinion, the most important part of health class.” 

According to the FDA the recommended daily caloric intake is 2,000, and for macronutrients 50% of your calories come from carbs, 30% coming from fats, and 20% from proteins. 

As an athletic trainer, Morin works with athletes treating and rehabbing injuries. When treating and rehabbing athletes from their injuries, nutrition plays a very big role. “When you’re healing, you want to stay away from inflammatory foods, sugar marks that list,” Morin said. “You have to be aware of things that you’re putting in your body when it’s trying to repair.”

Inflammatory foods are foods that cause inflammation in the body by activating the immune system unnecessarily, increase inflammatory protein production, disrupt metabolic processes, and cause oxidative cellular damage. So while healing it is important to stay away from processed foods, refined sugars, unhealthy fats, and excessive amounts of caffeine, in order to keep the body healing properly. 

Morin also works with athletes in order to prevent injuries from occurring and improve their strength. Nutrition is also important during this phase, “Strength Conditioning wise, you don’t need sugar, you need protein,” Morin said. “One of the problems with sugar is depending on the amount of grams you eat a day it erases a lot of the protein grams that you eat, for example, if you ate 200 grams of protein today after a training session, but you had 60-70 grams of sugar. Well, you probably only got about 50 grams of protein versus 200.”

Although students at MSHS know the risks of eating fast food, senior athlete Ashur Lavigne still chooses to eat it. “The health risks don’t really affect me a whole lot, because I feel like I’m an active person.” He chooses to get fast food due to it being a quick and easy meal. “When I got into my teens and started playing sports, it was just easier for the family to pick up fast food on the way home after practices and games,” Lavigne said. “It’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s cheap and it tastes really good.”

TJay Davis, a recent high school graduate, an employee at McDonald’s close to the school, and sports photographer at Manitou Springs recognizes many faces when it comes to lunch time. “I recognize a lot of kids, usually they wear school gear,” Davis said, “most of them from football and boys basketball.” He also recognizes the accessibility of fast food. “It has saved time for those who need something to eat quickly.”

While fast food is very accessible and is a quick option to grab on the go it is inherently unhealthy. However, if there are few options Morin recommends sandwich shops, “The best thing to do would be to go get a sandwich, like Subway or Jimmy John’s,” Morin said. “But you can make a sandwich super sugary, if you put a bunch of sauces on it and you get the cookies and the chips.”

Even though fast food is not a very nutritious option most things in moderation won’t do much harm. Jeck commented on moderation being the key to a healthy lifestyle. “If you’re eating it once a week, maybe a couple times a month, you’re on a really good track to living a healthy life.”