Food Junk

By Dean L. Jones

Reversing junk food to food junk is done to simulate thought.  Junk is a term that when not associated with the word food conjures up thoughts of rubbish, trash, useless, scrap, garbage, liter, refuse, and debris.  Paradoxically, instead of saying junk food substituting rubbish food or debris food does not sound right.  So if these synonymous terms for junk are accurate, it seems dim-witted to eat it.  Even the two words placed together are oxymoronic since food means things like provisions and nutrition, which is totally contradictory to these aforementioned meanings for junk.

Commonly compared are fueling our body to an automobile, where using something called junk petroleum, with zero octane, would never fly for the average car owner.  Mainly because there would be no positive combustion, and in fact the car would die instantaneously.  This analogy strikes the body the same from eating junk food, it is just that the ill-health occurs more slowly than how machines react to junk fuel.

Somehow, we get away with ruining our health from over ingesting processed junk foods simply because death does not occur immediately upon eating.  Nonetheless, eating junk over time takes its toll on the body, which shows up in the skyrocketing American obesity and disease rates.  Everyone knows better, so why do we believe it is okay?

The junk foodstuff snack makers are earning greater than $60 billion a year from America’s junk food obsession   Junk foodstuff uses ingredients that prey on a person’s sugar and salt cravings.  The processed sugar is the lure, but junk food hooks the eater with scientifically proven flavors and other sensory factors that addict the eater to repeat the experience again and again.

The flavor grabbing monster works in direct contrast to how the body responds from ingesting whole foods.  Nature makes it possible to become full or satiated from eating whole foods, unlike how manufacturers work at keeping the satiation button turned off to make the brain reacting with wanting more.  Artificial ingredients produce a bliss point in the brain, thereby seriously confusing the body’s metabolism.  Our bodies require a natural cutoff, otherwise it becomes fooled by particular tastes without calories, and is more likely to keep on eating, as the point of satisfaction is long in becoming a reality.

Even though processed sugar is more addictive than cocaine, without a doubt junk foods combine various flavors and textures to produce highly addictive products.  An uncanny science is used not just for chips, cookies, and sodas, but for all processed foods, from condiments to pasta sauce.  For example, junk foods seize the brain by using salt, sugar, and unique fats.  The various seasonings employed create a high salivation response helping the junk to quickly dissolve in the mouth producing a rapid pleasurable sensation, beckoning the mind to hurriedly repeat the same experience.

www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones, Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributes his view on health attributes derived from processed foodstuff items.