Why is obesity associated with junk food when a calorie is a calorie

???????????????

Wow. I think we need a forum just for your questions. =P

Because it doesn't fill you up and it's high in calories, so people eat and eat and eat without becoming full. You just have to watch your portion size.

You should do some research online. Try googling some of these questions. You'll find a lot of good info out there.

A calorie might be a calorie, but there are good calories and bad calories. 

And then some people believe that certain foods react to differently to other foods.  Getting into the chemistry that is beyond me.  See the Zone diet for that one.

100 grams of chips or a 100 grams of an apple, what is healthier?
A serving of french fries or a baked potato, which is healthier?

Which is going to clog your arteries?

Because it is more common for people to get fat off of junk food than healthy food.

1) it is harder to overeat calories when you are filling up on vegetables, because of their low calorie content and high volume. However, I can easily down a box of krispy cremes and be over my caloric intake for the entire day.

2) because people who are fat got that way by not being conscious of their eating habits-- or not being informed, or not caring.  So people who are fat often just eat what tastes good until they are done. Junk food is usually the stuff that tastes good!

Here's an article to look at. Studies have shown that instances of obesity are highest among the poorest groups of people for reasons ranging from health related problems, to not being informed and simply not being able to afford the healthier choices and having easier access to cheaper unhealthy foods.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22476265/ ;

...that tastes good and is convenient.  You have to prepare (wow, I had to wash and cut the lettuce to make the salad and I couldn't eat it while driving) good food while if you don't respect food and will eat anything regardless of what it does, you just have to unwrap it and put it in your mouth.

 

Also, it takes nutrients to properly digest and deal with food and "food-stuffs".  Junk food, if it resembles real food has had what was good about the food "refined" out of it, making it difficult for the body to properly deal with it.  This causes a host of problems.  Sometimes when the body can't manage something it just shoves it into fat cells.  If you have food you struggle to digest it sort of goes through slowly and rots in your gut and makes you generally unpleasant to be around in a small room without sufficient air circulation.  :P  And--if you aren't moving it through, you also have a better chance of getting colon cancer and Chrohn's disease and other diseases of the intestinal tract.  

conspiricy!

I once had a doctor tell me he didn't care If I ate 1,200 cal of chips as long as it was 1,200 cals????? sounds healthy huh? he's not my doc any more.

Because when people eat junk food that aren't usually thinking about how many calories they are eating. Usually it's just about how much food they are getting for the money. So for example, a Big Mac, large fries, big soda, basically a meal at Mickey Ds would be about 1,400 calories. If that's all you ate for the whole day, ok.

But how many people just have one meal like this a day, and nothing else? So factor in all the other food someone might eat and they have way more calories for the day than they need.

A calorie is a calorie, so in theory if you ate only your basic calorie needs in the form of junk food you wouldn't gain weight. Your daily expenditure would equal your daily intake. But think how unhealthy that would be? You wouldn't be getting a very good combination of nutrients, and you'd probably have a whooping amount of fat. There are people who are not fat, just eat junk, and are not very healthy :)

Because people do not stop eating the junk food once they have reached their daily caloric needs. Most people in the united states do not even realize how many calories they actually consume on a daily basis and how much thier body really needs. The numbers can be so far apart that it is scary.

I don't think anybody has mentioned this yet, but although number of calories consumed are very important for dieting, so is looking at the daily percentages of fats and carbohydrates,etc.. I mean, most packaged pastries,chocolates, and fastfoods are LOADED with fat and carbohydrates. For example:

1 Snickers bar:        ;       &n bsp;        ;       &n bsp;        ;       &n bsp;        ;       &n bsp;        ;       &n bsp;        ;     

273 calories. Total fat:14.0g(22%DV) (26%DV saturated&trans fats) Total Carbohydrates: 33.7g(11%)

so if your on a 2000 calorie diet, you can have 7 mars bars a day, and that will put you at 1911cals. So, your still under your calories, yes..but what about the fats?

you now have 154% of your daily needed intake of fats, ad 183% of your daily needed intake of saturated and trans fats. And although your only at 77% daily needed value of carbohydrates, most of these come from sugar, not fibre.

So although by eating 7 mars bars a day, you would still be under your suggest daily caloric intake, the amount of fats put into your body are more than 75% over the suggested intake of fat. And your body will not be able to burn that much fat EVERYDAY.

there's more to diets that strictly calories.

by the way, i dont know why that &N bsp; thing is there.

i apologize.