If eating junk food is bad for me, why do I still feel good?

Surely you've heard all about how our tastes were shaped by things that were rare in the environment that shaped our biological evolution. So modern humans evolved where items with high and easily available food energy (sugars and fats) were rare, as was food rich in certain minerals, like sodium. So we are wired up to really want these tastes and food experiences, the problem being that with modern food production these foods are not rare. In our evolutionary past, just getting enough calories was rare, and you die fast without enough fuel. Not getting enough Vitamin C will give you scurvy, and not getting enough Vitamin A can make you blind, but getting an adequate variety of micronutrients was not rare for our ancestors - hunter-gatherers eat a variety of foods with a broad micronutrient profile by default. There was no need to crave those *directly*. Just getting enough calories as a forager gets you most of the vitamins, minerals and trace nutrients you need for free. In the book Sex At Dawn, which focuses on human mating patterns, the authors talk about the signs of health in human remains actually declining with the rise in agriculture - we were still subject to calorie shortages, plus a radical drop in those less noticeable micronutrients (their depletion from the soil leads to diminishing returns on agriculture in stable agricultural settlements). Then there is another dynamic - one that often get activated by more serious addictions - which is that experiences are more addictive if the uptake and effect of a substance is quicker. One reason many smokers don't find that patches or gum takes the edge off their cravings is the speed of the nicotine hit. Quicker hits are more satisfying, as I understand it. Thus two forms of the same drug can have different addiction risks associated with them because their speed of uptake is quicker. The more quickly absorbed drug will feel better even if it is actually destroying you more quickly and totally. What hurts you more makes you feel better - in the short run. There are also questions of habituation. Have you ever eaten to extremely healthy standards for an extended length of time (say, 8 months plus)? You might not know what "good" feels like physically if not. It's kind of like people who don't do a full range of cardio, strength and flexibility training, and yet claim they feel good. In reality, they may have become habituated to relatively high levels of physical pain brought on by poor posture, low levels of energy due to cardiovascular sluggishness, and all the rest. They feel fine, and exercise feels not so fine to them, but if they train long enough to experience some health gains, it will re-calibrate their entire sense of what "fine" feels like. I've always eaten healthy food, except when totally exhausted by a life thrown out of balance by too much work, when I crave big doses of high-calorie food the way I crave coffee at those times - basically these are all ways of trying to forcibly compensate for the energy deficit I am running. I was as skinny as a rail though, and never worried about the sheer calorie count I consumed. I'd eat 100% natural peanut butter by preferences, for example (I hate the mass market stuff - it's salty as hell and tastes like its full of Crisco shortening), but I'd slather five tablespoons of the stuff over thick wads of bread without worrying about it. Then around age 40, a metabolic switch seems to have flipped. Now every calorie I eat shows up under my skin, it seems. Why aren't you interested in long-term health effects? Someone who starts smoking cigarettes doesn't feel bad because of them in the early years, necessarily. How far would you take that? When I lived in South Korea, and went to the dentist, the dental assistants would hold X-ray films against the side of your teeth in your mouth with their fingers, instead of having you bite on them. They wore no protective lead aprons or anything, of course. When I reacted with honest horror at what they were doing to themselves, they assured me very sweetly that they knew how unhealthy it was to expose themselves to all that radiation, but things went quicker this way. Of course, even though getting X-rayed all the time is horrible for your health, they felt fine on a day-in, day-out basis, while they were young.

You're a lucky guy (I was too). At 26, your basal metabolism is still relatively high. The BMR (basal metabolism rate) is the rate at which your body burns energy for basic life supporting functions, including keeping the temperature of your body on a constant level. It varies from person to person, and diminishes with age. It drops about 2% per decade (average), and can drop even more depending on how much lean body mass (muscle) you lose due to aging and lack of exercise. In general, as you get older you'll start to gain weight very quickly, much quicker than you can anticipate based on your current experience. Also, if you keep eating like this you'll have a much harder time changing your diet later in life. So don't push your luck. In my case, I always liked healthy foods but had my fair share of beer and barbecues, which I can't have now in the same frequency and volume as before, but it was relatively easy for me to adapt to adapt - and even so I gained about 1 kg per year as I went over 35. I eat today at 45 much less - I'd say something like 30% less - than I ate during my 20's. The fact that I do less exercise (the typical lifestyle of my age, working a lot and raising two kids that take the majority of my free time) doesn't help anything. Besides that, keep in mind that some of the damage that your diet is doing is insidious, and may not be apparent until later in your life. Your body is incredibly resilient and is taking a huge toll; you can't feel it now but it can hit you later, possibly when there's not much that you can do. Take care while you can!

For the most part, the human body will manufacture the things that it needs out of the things that it has, but not necessarily without a price. It can produce glucose from protein with minor stress to the kidneys they can compound over time. It can suffer oxidative damage that has not been damaged to the point of causing a symptom yet. Also, in time, problems may compound one another. You might find that you have a mild chronic infection, where normally your immune system can keep it at bay but when compromised some symptoms will flare up and you will think it is a new disease. You might find that your cells are still sensitive to insulin or leptin, for example, but given time with the same diet they will lose that sensitivity. The human body is very good at dealing with environmental stress for short periods of time, but human beings were not designed to withstand a lifetime of stress, whether that stress takes the form of the anxiety and stress that we are all familiar with, or various stressors due to biochemistry. Take it from me. It is way better to prevent a problem now then to try to deal with in the future. There are so many things I wish I could go back and tell my younger self, and I am only 26. They have to do with my decisions from about age 15 through 20 years old.

Lot's of things you can get away with at 26 - that won't work at 36 - or 46.  Consider this.  In 1985 there was no state with an obesity rate greater than 10%.  Today - there are no states with an obesity rate lower than 20% - here's the breakdown: 14 states - 20% - 24% obesity 23 states - 25% - 29% obesity 13 states - 30% + obesity Right now - your metabolism is high - but you *might* want to get your cholesterol checked too.  You can have dangerously high cholesterol - and still be wafer thin - and there are significant risks to high cholesterol. As to feeling good - easy enough to do with that diet - but you'd be surprised how much *better* you'll feel with a more nutritious diet.

Don't discount the youth factor. Being young lets you recover faster from all kinds of assaults on your health like getting drunk, staying up late, doing drugs, etc. Not many of us felt bad doing these things in our youth. We feel lousy now, however. It is absolutely normal for you to disregard the warnings of your elders. Enjoy yourself and remember how good it felt to be young. It is over much too fast.

If your adding a bunch of junk food to your diet it won't have a marred affect on you during your younger years when the cells of your body are relatively young. The equation however should take in consideration time. The acute affects of eating unhealthy will not be noticed. That is because your trully covering you macro nutrient needs and many foods are fortified with minerals, think salt, cereal and other processed products to make sure you dont get a nutritional deficiency. However these largely mainstream diets do not contain any micronutreints. Specifically phytonutrients. compared to the handful of 30-40 macronutrients THere are thousands upon thousands of these smaller chemicals that science has deemed you only "need" in small quantities to survive. What happens when you don't get these nutrients for 10, 15, 20 years? Ultimately these nutrients comprise many regulation, metabolism, regeneration pathways in your body to help keep you healthy. So yea I don't think you will really notice the difference until some solid time goes by and your enzymes, or cells don't function the way they used to because they are not being nourished.

May you be healthy and happy is my wish for you. Maybe your body is able to cope with all the junk food and hopefully you will remain healthy in years, which is not the case with a lot of people eating food of poor quality. Most people get sick because they do not know how to eat.

People do drugs because they make them feel good. Junk food results in releases of happy good feeling chemicals, but if it is junk food then it also does things like deplete your minerals and cost you your health and well being. Just because you don't notice it doesn't mean it's not happening. People should be able to feel fantastic and be very fit, but they just sit on their butts all day and do not even feel their bodies. You might be chronically tense and your body in pain, but since you just are aware of your thoughts and not your body you do not realize it.

I'm 24 years old , not fat , and get high cholesterol. Actually I ask for it! I totally crave for junk foods, eating in way much insanely big portions of amount. Annoyingly, I can not stop eating them until have them all done or get myself sick every time when I get to start. I feel absolutely bad ending up like that but just can't help it even though I know it clear that can worsen my high cholesterol problem or bring some other health problems. Never take young age as your advantage and go easy on yourself. You're what you eat!