Abstract
Today, the rapid development of the fast-food industry and the easy access to cooked or semi-cooked foods that are flooding the market are exerting an unignorable influence on the lives of dialysis patients. We surveyed 120 dialysis patients consisting of 79 employed individuals and 41 housewiven with respect to eating at fast-food restaurants and intake of cooked or half-cooked foods.
Packaged precooked foods were consumed by 47.5% and cooked dishes by 53.4 % of the patients. Workers selected these foods primarily because they were too busy to cook and housewives, because they wanted to reduce the preparation time and effort. More workers than housewives ate out, with the overall percentage of those using fast-food restaurants being 73.3%. The workers did so due to the demands of their jobs, and the house-wives for a greater quantity and variety of food. A few patients relied on the fast-food industry because they had no one to cook for them.
Although the patients were making an effort to consume sufficient nutrients and especially to avoid intake of excess salt and water, the recent changes in our dietary habits appear to have considerable effects. A greater effort is considered to be necessary to instruct these patients not only on the importance of restricting salt and water intake, but also on the qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of a well-balanced diet.
