When Stomach Pain Strikes After Eating Fried Food

Who doesn’t love french fries or fried chicken? Well, your taste buds might, but your stomach could very well revolt. If downing a delicious helping of fish and chips ends up leaving you in a world of discomfort, it might be time to cut back.

Fried foods are more difficult to digest due to the fat they contain,” explains Connie Diekman, RD, a food and nutrition consultant, former president of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and author of The Everything Mediterranean Diet Book. In essence, fried foods equal fatty foods. And fat, she adds, “is a very large chemical molecule, and it requires several steps in digestion.”

“Most of the digestion of fat occurs in the intestine,” she notes. “In the intestine, we release enzymes and bile that help break down the fat so that we can absorb the nutrients it contains.”

High-fat meals take up less space in your stomach than low-fat meals, and that means you won’t feel full as quickly as you would with lower-fat foods. That can lead to overeating. The situation is particularly accelerated if the high-fat content comes from fried foods.

If we overeat fat, it can be uncomfortable as your body slowly releases the needed enzymes or bile, Diekman notes. “Generally, the discomfort is in the midsection of the abdomen. But if the meal was especially high in fat, we can feel discomfort all through the midsection and lower abdomen.”

“Since fat does take longer to digest than other foods, the discomfort of a high-fat meal can linger longer than we like,” she notes. “If the discomfort is more of a gas-type pain and it only lasts two to four hours, then it likely is nothing more than ‘I ate too much.’ But if the discomfort goes on for longer than a day, you should contact your doctor to assess if it could be something more serious.

Here’s something else to consider when staring down a plate of deep-fried doughnuts or egg rolls: You could be setting yourself up for payback.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, high-fat foods can trigger or worsen gastroesophageal reflux (GER) and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). GERD indicates having persistent acid reflux (when the contents of the stomach flow back into the esophagus, causing irritation; heartburn is a symptom of GERD), which is no one’s idea of a pleasant after-dinner experience.

If post-meal discomfort isn’t enough to dissuade you from another helping of fried chicken, a warning from the Mayo Clinic might: Fried foods could actually increase the risk for chronic diseases. Why? Aside from the higher likelihood of obesity that comes with consuming high-calorie and high-fat foods, blame the oils that are typically used to fry up your favorite meal.

Our bodies really weren’t designed to process certain oils often used for frying. Research in The Journal of Nutrition suggests that intake of peanut oil, lard, and refined blended plant oils increases the risk for type 2 diabetes, and a meta-analysis published in the journal Heart found that fried food consumption may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. And a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that as fried food consumption negatively affects gut health, it’s associated with a higher risk of obesity, central fat distribution, and cardiometabolic diseases. As many as a third of all Americans eat a fast-food meal, most often fried, every day, notes the Mayo Clinic. And that’s taking a toll on health and longevity.

According to a study published in the BMJ and based on the health records of more than 100,000 women 50 to 79 years old, consuming a daily helping of either fried chicken or fried fish increases the risk of death by 13 percent.