French fries are the top choice for binge-eating, movie night or days when you do not want to cook anything. It’s easier and faster to make. However, over the period of time, snacking on these snacks has been deemed unhealthy by people claiming it triggers several health risks

Recently, a fitness influencer, Siddhartha Singh, came into the spotlight for calling French fries the “worst food”. He called French fries the “hyper-palatable” food, items that contain high levels of sugar, carbohydrates, sodium, and fat which triggers the reward part of your brain, leading to consuming more.

“If you have one, you’ll have to eat 50. This food will put you on a blood-sugar roller coaster. High fat, high carb! You eat it, and after 10 minutes, you’re hungry again, but your blood sugar goes up and then falls.” He explains in the video that French fries absorb all the oil, and when you eat them, it goes directly into your body.

Highly processed foods are usually engineered to have enjoyable qualities of sweetness, saltiness, or richness.

Meanwhile, Aditi Prasad Apte, Senior Clinical Nutritionist at Aster RV Hospital, says otherwise and claims that fries are not entirely unhealthy but the damage caused by them depends on how they are cooked or how often they are eaten in quantity.

She explains that every food's nutritional value falls into one of two categories: healthy or unhealthy. The nutritional value of French fries depends on their cooking method and portion size. She said, "Deep-fried fries eaten frequently can contribute to weight gain, high blood pressure and heart disease due to excess calories, unhealthy fats and sodium.”

How Can It Affect Your Health?

Usually, French fries affect metabolic health. Sodium consumed, which is in high concentration in French fries, affects the kidneys and elevates blood pressure, while unhealthy fats can raise LDL, which is bad cholesterol.

Dr Apte shares that hormonal differences can also influence how fries impact men and women.

“In women, frequent consumption may worsen insulin resistance and hormonal imbalances seen in conditions like PCOS. In men, it can contribute to abdominal obesity, which is closely linked to heart disease.”

Many women have strong cravings for fries during PMS. The expert explains that fluctuating estrogen and progesterone levels can lower serotonin, a chemical which affects the mood, which leads to a craving for high-carbonated foods like fries.

She further says, it may boost mood, but excess salt can worsen bloating.

How Can You Make French Fries Healthy?

Dr. Apte also shares how fried foods can be eaten healthily:

• Baking, air frying or using minimal oil.
• A portion is about 80–100 grams, roughly a small serving.
• Roasted vegetables like carrots, zucchini, beetroot or pumpkin can also be used as a good substitute.

Worried that your vegetarian-only diet may not save you from cancer? A new study showed that a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and fiber-containing foods, and no meat, can lower the risks of five cancers, namely breast cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, and multiple myeloma.

The study published today in the British Journal of Cancer, however, showed that vegetarians had nearly double the risk of squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus, and a significantly higher risk of bowel cancer. This may be due to a lack of certain nutrients that are more abundant in animal foods, said the researchers from the University of Oxford, UK.

"Vegetarians typically consume more fruit, vegetables, and fiber than meat eaters and no processed meat, which may contribute to lower risks of some cancers,” said Aurora Perez Cornago, principal investigator of the study and formerly Associate Professor at Oxford Population Health.

“The higher risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in vegetarians and bowel cancer in vegans may relate to lower intakes of certain nutrients more abundant in animal foods. Additional research is needed to understand what is driving the differences in cancer risk found in our study,” Cornago added.

The researchers advised eating meals around wholegrains, pulses, fruit and vegetables, and avoiding processed meat and limiting red meat to increase overall protection from cancer.

What Did The Study Find?

The findings are based on data from more than 1.8 million people from three continents.

Compared to meat eaters, about 72,000 vegetarians in the study had:

• 21 percent lower risk of pancreatic cancer
• 9 percent lower risk of breast cancer
• 12 percent lower risk of prostate cancer
• 28 percent lower risk of kidney cancer
• 31 percent lower risk of multiple myeloma

Tim Key, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford Population Health, and co-investigator, said the study helps to shed light on the benefits and risks associated with vegetarian diets.

The study found no statistically significant differences in risk for colorectal, stomach, liver, lung (in never smokers), endometrial, ovarian, mouth and pharynx, or bladder cancers, or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, and esophageal adenocarcinoma in vegetarians.

Vegans had a statistically significantly higher risk of colorectal (bowel) cancer when compared with meat eaters.

Pescatarians had lower risks of breast and kidney cancers, as well as a lower risk of bowel cancer. Poultry eaters were found to have a lower risk of prostate cancer.

For the other cancers studied, there was no evidence that the risk in vegans differed from that of meat eaters, and for some less common cancers, there were too few vegan cases to analyze. Further studies are needed to confirm these results in the vegan population, the team said.

Global Cancer Burden: How Diet Influences Risk Worldwide

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were an estimated 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million deaths in 2022.

About 1 in 5 people develop cancer in their lifetime, approximately 1 in 9 men and 1 in 12 women die from the disease.

The American Cancer Society's guidelines for diet to prevent cancer include

• A variety of vegetables – dark green, red, and orange, fiber-rich legumes (beans and peas), and others
• Fruits, especially whole fruits in a variety of colors
• Whole grains
• Avoiding red and processed meats
• Sugar-sweetened beverages
• Highly processed foods and refined grain products

Data from the Indian Council of Medical Research also shows that one out of 10 cancers may be linked to diet, and over half of these are caused by eating less than five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

It also advises against diets rich in saturated fats, red meat, and salt and poor in fiber, red, and processed meats.

Typhoid have plagued humans for millennia and many believe that in developed countries it is no longer considered a threat. However, this 'ancient killer' is still dangerous and a Lancet study published in 2022, titled: The international and intercontinental spread and expansion of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella Typhi: a genomic epidemiology study, noted that typhoid fever is evolving extensive drug resistance, and is rapidly replacing strains that are not resistant.

As of now, antibiotics are the only effective treatment for typhoid, caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi). However, in the past three decades, the bacteria's resistance to oral antibiotics have been growing.

What Did The Study Find?

In this large-scale investigation, researchers from several countries analyzed the genetic sequences of 3,489 Salmonella Typhi (S. Typhi) samples collected between 2014 and 2019 from Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Their findings revealed a concerning increase in extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Typhi strains across the region.

XDR Typhi is resistant not only to commonly used first-line antibiotics such as ampicillin, chloramphenicol, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, but is also increasingly showing resistance to more advanced treatments, including fluoroquinolones and third-generation cephalosporins.

More alarmingly, these highly resistant strains are spreading quickly beyond national borders.

Although the majority of XDR Typhi cases originate in South Asia, researchers have documented close to 200 cases of international transmission since 1990. Many of these strains have spread to Southeast Asia and parts of East and Southern Africa. Additionally, cases of these drug-resistant typhoid strains have been detected in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.

"The speed at which highly resistant strains of S. Typhi have emerged and spread in recent years is a real cause for concern, and highlights the need to urgently expand prevention measures, particularly in countries at greatest risk," said Stanford University infectious disease researcher Jason Andrews when the results were published.

Drug-resistant Typhoid And Warnings

Scientists have warned about the drug-resistant typhoid for years now. In 2016, the first XDR typhoid strain was identified in Pakistan.

By 2019, this had become a dominant genotype in the nation. However, by the early 2000s, mutations that confer resistance to quinolones accounted for more than 85 per cent of all cases in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Singapore. At the same time, cephalosporin resistance was also taking over.

Today, only one oral antibiotics is left: the macrolide, azithromycin. However, scientists believe that this medicine may also not work for much longer.

The 2022 Lancet study reported that mutations responsible for resistance to azithromycin are increasingly emerging and spreading, raising fresh concerns among scientists. Researchers warned that this development “threatens the efficacy of all oral antimicrobials for typhoid treatment,” significantly narrowing the pool of effective medicines. Although these particular mutations have not yet been observed in extensively drug-resistant (XDR) S. Typhi strains, experts caution that if XDR variants acquire azithromycin resistance as well, treatment options would become extremely limited, creating a potentially dire public health scenario.

Typhoid fever remains a serious and potentially life-threatening illness. If left untreated, as many as 20 percent of cases can result in death. In 2024 alone, more than 13 million typhoid cases were reported worldwide, underscoring the scale of the burden.

While typhoid conjugate vaccines offer a promising tool to help prevent future outbreaks and reduce transmission, their impact depends heavily on widespread and equitable access. Without significant global expansion of vaccination coverage, health experts warn that the world could face another major public health crisis driven by increasingly drug-resistant typhoid strains.

"The recent emergence of XDR and azithromycin-resistant S. Typhi creates greater urgency for rapidly expanding prevention measures, including use of typhoid conjugate vaccines in typhoid-endemic countries," the authors write.

What Could Be Done To Prevent This From Happening?

Experts say that nations must now expand their access to typhoid vaccines and invest in new antibiotic research.

A 2021 study in India published in journal Vaccine estimated that if children are vaccinated against typhoid in urban areas, it could prevent up to 36 per cent of typhoid cases and death. Pakistan is also leading the front as it was the first nation in the world to offer routine immunization for typhoid. A small number of countries have followed the suit or are "planning or considering introduction".

The World Health Organization (WHO) too have prequalified four typhoid vaccines as of April 2025.

In 2025, Andhra Pradesh reported 1,566 scrub typhus cases, and nine suspected deaths, according to data from the Integrated Health Information Platform, Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP-IHIP) on 8 December. Followed by Karnataka with 1,870 cases, Tamil Nadu 7,308 cases, and Telangana, 309 cases. Scrub typhus cases have significantly increased from previous year. It is one of the deadliest infections affecting multiple organs, or even death. Early it was relevant to poeple working in fields, new studies show it migrating to human settlements.

What Is Scrub Typhus?

Scrub typhus, also known as bush typhus, is a bacterial infection caused by bacteria infection, caused by bacterium Orientia tsutsugamushi. It is spread through bites of infected larval mites, Chiggers.

Most cases of scrub typhus occur in rural areas of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, China, Japan, the Indian subcontinent and northern Australia. Until now, it was believed that chiggers only lurked in the tall grasses of remote paddy fields or dense forests. Due to this, it is commonly known as "farmers' disease", only confined to the fields.

However, new PLOS study data revealed the opposite. The study is led by researchers from Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore and international collaborators and suggests that the bulk of infections are now even occurring within human settlements.

The study monitored over 32 000 people in Tamil Nadu, which led to the conclusion that agricultural activities, long considered the primary risk factor, were only weakly associated with the disease in high-prevalence areas.

How are Human Settlements A Prime Factor?

Risk for scrub typhus is significantly higher for those living in clustered houses or homes with fewer rooms. If the micro environment around the residence is unmaintained, gardens are patched, or even the damp corners of a courtyard, it could lead to breeding ground for the mites and the rodents that carry Chiggers.

Who Is At Most Risk?

It was once believed that working-age men were the most affected, but the new study tells otherwise. According to the new data, women over 60 are at the highest risk of infection.

As women spend most of their time in and around the home, due to household work, from the kitchen to the laundry, these activities are now the primary cross point of contact with infected mites.

What Is the Risk Factor Of Infection?

As initial symptoms of infection, such as fever, headache, and muscle pain, are the same as viral flu or dengue, many first seek help from untrained practitioners or local pharmacies.

By the time they reach the hospital, the disease has already progressed to severe complications like acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), Kidney failure, or Meningoencephalitis, which is inflammation of your meninges and brain at the same time, a life-threatening condition.

Not only this, the researchers revealed that nearly 10 percent of affected households exceed 25 percent of their income in the treatment.

For severe cases, the cost of treatment can be up to approximately INR 110,000, a staggering sum for rural and peri-urban families earning a fraction of that monthly.

Prevention

• Do not let the grass grow tall around your house
• Tightly maintain kitchen gardens and remove piles of wood or debris where rodents (the primary hosts for mites) might nest.
• As chiggers are usually found close to the ground, do not sit directly on the grass or soil. Use chairs or mats. For children, make them wear socks and full- length trousers while playing in the yard.
• If you notice a small, dark, cigarette-burn-like mark, it is usually left behind by mites. It is most likely "Eschar". It is an important critical clue. As the bite is painless, it often goes unnoticed.
• Do a thorough skin check for an eschar, especially in warm, moist areas like the armpits, groin, or behind the knees.

Early intervention is necessary, as if a fever lasts more than two days, don't just treat it as "seasonal fever".

Consult a qualified doctor and specifically ask about scrub typhus. Infection can be treated with doxycycline common antibiotic, in the early stages. The case fatality rate in this study was 1.5 percent, hospital based studies in South India have previously recorded mortality rates as high 30 percent when treatment is delayed