It’s 2012. And that means that if you eat fast food more than, oh, let’s say once or twice a month, you’re losing.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like the occasional quarter-pounder with fries just as much as the next guy. But, at this point, you should know just how bad that eating fast food all the time is for you. It’ll clog your arteries. It’ll cause you to gain weight. It’ll make you feel lethargic. Basically, it’ll do nothing but bad things for your body once you get over the stimulation it provides for your taste buds. Oh, and it could also give you brain damage. Severe brain damage.

Don’t take our word for it, though. Just ask Monika Samaan—an Australian girl who was just awarded $8.3 million by KFC. Reason being: Samaan ate a Twister wrap from the chicken chain back in October 2005 and suffered salmonella encephalopathy, a brain injury linked to food poising that caused her to suffer brain damage as well as a blood infection and septic shock. Yep. With one bite of a Twister, her life was forever altered. And, although the $8.3 million will certainly help her family try and piece it back together for her, she’ll never be the same again. All because she ate some fast food.

“Monika’s brain damage and severe disability has already exhausted the very limited resources of the family,” the girl’s lawyer said recently. “Monika is now a big girl and they are finding it increasingly difficult to lift her and to look after her basic needs as well as look after Monika’s younger siblings.”

Look, I’m well aware of the fact that Samaan probably could have caught this injury from any restaurant in the world. Poorly-prepared food is, well, poorly-prepared food. So, fast food isn’t necessarily the only thing that should be blamed here. But, I have to believe that fast food restaurants like KFC would be more likely to infect people with these kinds of diseases, if for no other reason than that the people who prepare the food at fast food restaurants aren’t exactly master chefs. In fact, in most cases, they’re minimum-wage workers who are in charge of making sure that the food you eat is safe. It’s not exactly the most comforting thought in the world.

It’s one of the (many!) reasons you should seriously consider limiting the amount of fast food that you eat. If the artery clogging and the weight gain and the lethargy don’t convince you to do it, just think about the fact that you could literally be disabled as a result of eating fast food. That’s extreme thinking. But, if that is what it takes to get you to put the cheeseburger down and pick up something healthier, then so be it. It’s 2012. Shouldn’t we all be smarter about what we eat by now?

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