Why Do We Eat So Much Junk Food?

August 6, 2010 admin 2 comments

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Hi,

Do we really need to eat so much junk food?

You might think that we need so many calories a day to live. This is actually partially true.

While we do need a certain minimum amount of calories to survive, we also need a certain amount of nutrients to function.

So it is possible for someone to eat a very highly nutritional meal with only 500 calories in it. Do this 3 times a day and add another 1-200 calories of a nutritional snack(s) and your body is satisfied throughout the day.

Not only is it satisfied, but it signals the rest of your body and its hormones saying “Hey, I’m good. Don’t need anymore food”.

On the other hand you could also go to a fast food joint and munch down 1500 calories in one meal. Do this a couple of times a day, add in a few high sugar sodas and candy snacks throughout the day and you could easily top 4000 calories a day.

Yet, your body is not happy. It is not getting enough nutrients. It is getting way to many calories, but not enough nutrients.

So it signals your body by saying, “Hey, I need some nutrients. Eat more. Give me my nutrients.”

So your body will actually realign your hormones. It will encourge ghrelin, the hunger hormone to tell your brain to eat more.

It will stop the leptin hormone (tells your brain it is full) from working.

At first it will cause the leptin to counter balance the ghrelin. But, over time it takes more and more leptin to counter balance ghrelin.

And eventually, it gives up.

Overweight and obese people have very high levels of leptin. But, since it stops functioning these people keep on eating with no counter balance to stop it.

Add this to the fact that most fast and junk foods do taste good and you can see how hard it is to counter this.

Don’t worry there are ways to get your hormones back in balance again.

Just keep reading this blog.