THE JOY OF JUNK FOODS
AND THE HUGE UNSEEN HARM...AND DENIAL
tba Starting draft, but you can get the idea...
WE EVOLVED FOR A REASON...
BUT IF THE WORLD CHANGES, THE "WHY" CHANGES...
But if the reality of the world changes, can't we, as intelligent beings, adjust to what works in the new reality and not just stick ourselves with behaviors that did work in the past but don't work now?
If we don't apply our intelligence (ability) isn't that the same as not having it?
In that case, then, aren't we intentionally allowing ourselves to not have intelligence, in a sense?
THERE IS MORE THAN APPARENT DAMAGE - SHALL WE DENY IT?
Isn't it the first time in history that the future generations will live shorter lives , less healthier lives - and if you take out the rescuing effect of new operations and drugs, isn't the hidden bad effect even bigger?
Isn't it obvious that being overweight has huge side effects?
Isn't it obvious that 2/3 of us are overweight, with 1/3 obese?
Isn't there "information" there to heed?
Isn't it pathetic that we live lives where we get our joy from junk food (and TV)?
WHY IT IS A NATURAL INCLINATION
In the jungle or the natural outdoor world, we cavemen needed to be encouraged to get certain things "captured" into our bodies to help assure our survival. Since we had lots of periods of low supplies of food (and famines), we needed to "beef up" and store lots of fat in our bodies for conversion to energy when we needed it during the low supply times. (Of course, we walked an average of 12 miles a day, so our use of fat and energy was different.)
Sugar was rare, but it was super easy to convert to energy and also into fat storage, which then helped our survival. So the sweet taste was a natural chemical incentive, equivalent to an "emotion" that got us into consuming a lot of it to insure our survival. But evolution did suggest a limit where we felt less and less like eating a bunch of sugar after we'd already consumed it. And the body sensed "I have enough" for now to survive, so it lowered the incentive to eat more of it, somewhat. Of course, unlike rats, we don't heed the signals and we keep on thinking we will "feel better" if we eat more sweet or fat stuff. (See the "why rats are smarter than people" discussion in Seeing Reality, Clearly.)
Fat is satisfying.
Sugar is tasty.
Stimulation is exciting! (We take stimulants which up our energy from glucose so we feel "excited". Things are popping! We are alive and alert. The way of the rabbit where we rely on rapidly moving about, whereas the tortoise does better by using other methods without side effects to increase our aliveness and alertness naturally, such as using the tactics in Instant Energy From Something Good.)
We feel "driven" to eat the fat, sugar, to get stimulated, as if we were puppets having to obey every chemical manipulation from the body and the primitive mind. But we are not driven, they are not commands, not imperatives, not "needs".
"But I 'need' to have x...!"
No, you choose to and you have a big short term incentive chemical to get you to do it, but... We are not "PokeyMen" - it is a choice, not a given!
THE EFFECT OF BEING OUT OF BALANCE?
Each overload of the wrong stuff throws our body out of balance, so it has to exert effort to go back to balance - but while it does that, it shuts down other functions or impairs them to divert the energy to the repairing and to getting back into balance. So we get more cancer, heart disease from not being able to maintain those systems sufficiently. (DNA replication is a "system", as, of course, is the heart.)
WE MIGHT ASK WHY WE DENY IT
Is this just a huge wish for this not to be true? Isn't there sufficient evidence and lots of articles around that suggest that we should not ignore this and/or that our body really can't make up for it.
THERE ARE PLENTY OF "ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES"
Though I'll fill this in a bit more later, right now it is true that if we stop eating junk foods, our taste buds will alter to being more sensitive to tastes and will experience more pleasure - and not need to get the excessive stimulation to "poke" us into a different state.
