Eating fast food is not good for health and we are all familiar with it. Now, the researchers, including an Indian origin, have found something bizarre.  

According to a study, the areas with a higher number of fast food outlets record most cases of people suffering heart attacks.

The findings, published in the European Heart Journal, also showed that for every additional fast food store, there were four additional heart attacks per 100,000 people every twelvemonth.

The findings were in tune across metropolitan and rural regions after adjusting for age, high blood lipids, obesity, smoking status, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

The results draw attention to the importance of the food environment as a potential contributor towards health, said Indian origin researcher Tarunpreet Saluja from the University of Newcastle in Australia.

This retrospective cohort study included 3,070 patients admitted to hospital with a heart attack between 2011 and 2013.

For the results, the research team recorded the total number of outlets within each local government region and compared different areas to break down the association between density of fast food restaurants and prevalence of the heart attack.

"The ubiquitous presence of fast food is an important consideration for the ongoing development of rural and metropolitan areas," he said.

"This study highlights the impact of the food environment on health. In addition to regulating the location and density of fast food outlets, local areas should ensure good access to supermarkets with healthy food," said Jeroen Bax, Professor at the Leiden University in the Netherlands.

By Sowmya Sangam