Why is it so Hard to Resist Junk Food?

It is often difficult to resist the lure of junk food when you know it tastes so good. Whenever you enter a supermarket, you're surrounded by lots of lovely cakes, packets of biscuits and bars of chocolate. Of course, there is fresh fruit available as well, but you tend to be drawn to the 'naughty' foods. Perhaps it is, in part, because you know the food is bad for you that you want to eat it all the more. As soon as you tell yourself you can't have something, you generally find yourself thinking about it more and you can't always be bothered to fight your cravings.

It doesn't help that, growing up, you often form an emotional attachment to food. Your parents may have used food to reward you for doing well at school or you may have come home from school and been allowed a treat every evening. As a consequence, you learn to associate eating food with positive feelings and you obviously want to experience these positive feelings again. The trouble is that many parents give their children junk food and once you've got a taste for all those foods that are high in calories, sugar, and full of fat, it can be hard to resist them.

After all, it's all the bad stuff that makes junk food taste so good and gives it an almost addictive quality. You get a high from eating a bar of chocolate, because endorphins are released into your blood stream, and you suddenly get some energy. Unfortunately, the good feeling you get from eating chocolate won't last long and your energy levels soon plummet, and this is when you find yourself reaching for something else to eat. It is not surprising that so many people are struggling to resist junk food when it seems to mess with your body's chemistry.

Plus, junk food is pretty cheap. There are always special offers on chocolate and sweets when you go shopping and when you think you're getting a bargain you may be inclined to buy more than you need. Unfortunately, when you have lots of calorific goodies in the house it is very tempting to overindulge, because you know you can just get some more the next time you go shopping. Junk food is easy to eat – you don't need to chop it or prepare it any way – you just unwrap your bar of chocolate or open your packet of biscuits and start chomping away.

It doesn't matter how often you're told that junk food is bad for you and that eating too much of it could lead to excessive weight gain, it just tastes too good. You can eat it on the go and it's often the most convenient option; plus it gives you an emotional boost and perks you up. Unfortunately, in the long run, you can't escape the fact that if you don't eat a balanced diet you could find your health suffers. If you live on a diet of junk food it may be worth looking for ways to improve your eating habits, so that you don't develop health problems that could be related to what you eat.