Manufactured by ConAgra Foods, Slim Jim is a popular American brand of dried sausage or jerky snacks. Americans are in love with Slim Jim and they consume over 500 million Slim Jims annually. You can now find Slim Jim in 21 varieties and it is no surprise if you become addicted to one of them. While Slim Jim is popular, it does not necessarily mean it is healthy too. This makes people ask, "Are Slim Jims bad?" Let's dig deeper to find the answer.
Are Slim Jims Bad for You?
The simple answer is yes. It would not be wrong to suggest that Slim Jim is nothing but beef-flavored heart attack waiting to happen. The only good reason to eat it is that you are miles from civilization and has nothing else to eat. Yes, Slim Jim provides you with 6% of your daily intake of iron, but that is pretty much it. It is devoid of any calcium, vitamin C, and vitamin A. You do get 7g of carbs but 2g of these carbs come from sugar with nothing coming from dietary fiber. At the same time, it is loaded with calories – 240 of them – with 20g of total fat.
One big reason to avoid Slim Jim at all cost is its sodium content – a pack offers 1,100mg of sodium. Due to what it contains, eating Slim Jim can lead to some serious health complications. Some short-term side effects include dehydration, nausea, and stomach cramps, whereas its long-term side effects include heart disease, cancer, stroke, obesity, and kidney damage.
What Is In Slim Jims?
While you may think that beef is the only ingredient in Slim Jim, it is certainly not the case. Other ingredients included in Slim Jim also make it easy to answer, "Are Slim Jims bad for you?" It contains lactic acid cultures, wheat proteins, mechanically separated chicken, dextrose, sodium nitrite, salt, and hydrolyzed soy. The presence of sodium nitrite makes it extremely harmful for you because it is linked to colorectal cancer. Nitrites form nitrosamines after being broken down in the stomach, which in turn cause cancer in pregnant women and young children.
These meat sticks contain poultry scraps that are pressed mechanically to extrude the meat, but that can give rise to several health problems. These sticks also use sugar and bacteria to produce lactic acid to lower the pH to around 5.0, but you cannot tell for sure if some harmful bacteria manage to survive.
Other Beloved But Unhealthy Snacks Like Slim Jims
Now you have the answer to, "Are Slim Jims bad for you?" but there are many other popular snacks that fall in the same category.
1. Donuts
Everyone likes donuts, but this does not make it healthy. The truth is that it is so unhealthy that you should make every effort to avoid eating it. The main reason is that it has zero nutritional value and is packed with sugar, fat, and carbs. You have to avoid it no matter if it is krispy or cakey – they are all equally harmful.
2. Mountain Dew
There is so much hype surrounding Mountain Dew, but this does not change the fact that it is nothing but a sugar-packed drink, which is extremely bad for your health. It also contains carbonic acid that is equally damaging. Moreover, it also contains Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO), which is banned in more than 100 countries for a reason. Drinking too much of drinks that contain BVO can have serious side effects, such as violent tendencies, memory loss, tremors, acute irritability, confusion, slurred speech, loss of peripheral vision, erratic reflexes, stupor, and so on.
3. Twinkies
Many people love Twinkies, but they do not know that these so-called cakes come with a limited shelf life of 25 days. They can expire because they are not made with dairy products. Why would you want to eat a cake that is without any dairy in it? It means that Twinkies contain some chemically processed ingredients that can be seriously unhealthy. You can definitely find something better to take with you to a gaming night, cannot you?
4. Pizza Rolls
Are Slim Jims bad for you? Yes, but what about pizza rolls? Those snack-sized pizzas are definitely all the rage, but they are even unhealthier as compared to a regular slice of pizza. You get a box and you can cook about forty of them. Some people do not mind cooking several boxes to prepare the Mount Everest of snacks, but they are not healthy, especially considering the fact that a serving of six bite-sized pizza rolls provides you with 9g of fat and 220 calories.
5. Combos
Eating Combos with veggies and fruits makes them less harmful, but you will still end up increasing your calorie intake without getting anything good. You get up to 140 calories per serving with 60 of these calories coming from fat. You can find 7 servings in a small 1oz bag, which means you get about 980 calories in total from one small bag with 420 of those calories being fat. They also use artificial flavoring to keep you interested, but jalapeno pepper is nothing better than pepperoni pizza or other varieties of Combos.