What can cause your heart to work so hard that it stops beating?
Junk food. What can cause your intestines to burst and spew their contents into your abdomen?
Junk food. What can cause you to fall into a spiraling form of depression? You guessed it—junk
food. Everyone craves junk food from time to time, but after learning what it does to your body,
you might think twice before biting into a piece of fried chicken or snacking on some chips.
Let’s start off with what junk food actually is. Usually, when you think of junk food,
the first things that come to mind are candy, chips, and fast food. But
you can’t forget about the liquids like soda, slushies, and energy drinks.
Fast food options have diversified recently, and even at places like Burger King and Mcdonald’s,
you are able to get plant-based meat substitutes and salads. However, pretty much all the things
you crave at these types of joints are considered junk food. No one is going to KFC and asking for
a salad with no dressing or croutons; they’re there for that salty, fatty, fried chicken.
Therefore, when we are talking about junk food, we are referring to
anything that has high amounts of added sugar, salt, or saturated fats in them. If you think
about what you’ve eaten today, you can probably identify at least one item as being junk food.
So, what are all these delicious yet unhealthy foods doing to your body? The short answer is
nothing good. We’re going to start with the short-term effects of eating only junk food
before moving into the long-term health risks. Although, long-term is relative because if all
you eat is junk food, you won’t be alive long enough even to notice the long-term effects.
It is scary just how quickly junk food can change your body and cause serious health problems.
Studies have shown that just eating one meal made up of junk food a week can be detrimental to your
health if you are not an active person. So, you can imagine that only eating junk food every day
will cause mayhem to all the systems in your body in a very short amount of time.
The immediate effects of junk food are based on what you’re consuming and how active you are.
If you binge eat an entire bag of chips or a whole fried chicken,
you are consuming a massive amount of sodium or salt. After a very salty meal,
your blood pressure may become elevated. This can cause all sorts of problems in the body,
from fatigue to heart attacks. Obviously, a heart attack would be an extreme unlikely,
and you would have to be very unhealthy for that to become a concern, but it is possible.
This is especially true if you have a pre-existing heart condition or a non-active lifestyle.
When you consume very salty junk food, it causes your blood vessels to constrict as
the salt extracts water from them. There is a reason that over half of your body
is made up of water. It plays a vital role in the circulation of nutrients,
cell functions, and chemical reactions in the body. Eating extremely salty foods all
the time can mess with your body’s ability to maintain homeostasis or its internal balance.
When your blood vessels constrict, your body needs to work harder
to get oxygen and nutrients circulated to all of your vital organs. On top of that,
your arteries narrow, which then slows the flow of blood, exasperating the situation even further.
When all of these things happen as a result of eating too much salt,
you begin to feel fatigued since your body is working harder than it should to keep you going.
Now you’re probably going to want a soda to go with your salty food because you will start
to feel dehydrated. Plus, it’d be ridiculous not to have dessert to finish off your meal,
which leads to the next dangerous ingredient in the junk food you’re eating.
Sugar. Your body craves the stuff because it’s what your cells use to make energy.
Therefore, you are biologically programmed to like the taste of things with sugar in them.
Junk food companies understand this at some level and take advantage of our biological
programming by increasing the amount of sugar in their products so they taste good to us.
These types of foods may be delicious,
but they have terrible side effects almost immediately after you consume them.
The problem with bombarding your body with sugars from junk food is that it forces your
body to try and balance the sudden influx in glucose. Your pancreas begins dumping insulin
into your bloodstream to signal your cells that sugar is available to make energy with.
Your cells then allow the sugar into them, and the mitochondria converts it into energy,
hence why it’s considered the powerhouse of the cell. This leads to a sugar rush which makes
you feel like you have and abundance of energy. However, we all know what happens next—you crash.
Any junk food that is high in added sugars will give you this rush and then leave you feeling
tired because your body panics and quickly uses up the influx with sugar, depleting it
in a relatively short amount of time. When there is only a little sugar left in your bloodstream,
your cells slow their energy production, and it leads to you feeling fatigued and groggy.
It can also lead to irritability and carvings for more sugary foods.
These are some of the most notable short-term side effects of eating junk food.
However, the high sugar content of junk food has even worse long-term effects on your body.
Each day that you consume junk food, you are at risk of developing a disease that could
change your life forever. Let’s get into the long-term health effects of consuming junk food
so that you can learn the risks to your body and hopefully modify your diet.
Over time the high amounts of sugar in junk food wreak havoc on your organs. The sudden
surge of sugar and the automatic response of the pancreas dumping insulin into the bloodstream can
cause all types of long-term problems. Studies have shown that people who eat junk food a few
times a week dramatically increase their chances of developing type 2 diabetes. And since you
are only eating a junk food diet, you are all but guaranteed to develop this disease at some point.
Type 2 diabetes occurs when your body doesn’t produce enough insulin, or the insulin no longer
signals your cells to take in sugar and use it to make energy. This leads to a build-up of sugar in
the bloodstream while simultaneously causing a dramatic drop in energy production. Type 2
diabetes can develop during a person’s lifetime and isn’t something you have to be born with. This
ultimately leads to the pancreas being overworked or damaged due to an unhealthy diet or lifestyle.
The high amounts of added sugar in junk food are one of the things that can cause this to occur.
The crazy thing is that with every meal you eat that’s made up of junk food,
you’re rolling the dice with developing type 2 diabetes. Research has shown that consistently
eating junk food can greatly reduce your muscles' ability to take in sugars to create energy. Given
enough time, your cells can develop a resistance to this process altogether, which results in type
2 diabetes and the need for medical intervention. Left untreated, diabetes can be life-threatening.
Too much of a good thing can definitely be detrimental to your health,
and there is no clearer example of this than overconsumption of sugars from junk food.
But there are so many other components of junk food that can lead to long-term health problems.
In fact, there is a connection between eating junk food and depression.
How could consuming unhealthy food lead to a change in brain chemistry?
It actually has more to do with what junk food is lacking than what’s contained in it.
A 2021 study out of Binghamton University found a connection between eating healthy foods such
as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and fish and an increase in positive mood and brain function.
This begs the question: what happens to someone’s brain who lacks the nutrients these food contain?
Another way to put this is: if all you eat is junk food low in nutrients,
what will happen to your brain? Nothing good, it turns out.
It has been determined that junk food satisfies hunger in the short term,
which seems to make the brain happy, but this is just an illusion. The brain may be tricked
into thinking you have gotten the nutrients you need from the junk food you’re eating due to the
increase in available energy, but over time your brain and body cells will begin to degrade as they
don’t have access to the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants they need to stay healthy.
Your body can only last so long on sugar and fats alone,
and your brain eventually realizes this. It is not clear what the exact trigger is, but some
studies suggest that people who consistently eat junk food are around 51% more likely to develop
depression than people on a healthy diet. This is a staggering number. It really makes you think if
the short-term pleasures of eating junk food are worth the risk of developing long-term depression.
The most likely reason this occurs is due to a mix of diet and lifestyle. If you are eating
junk food all day, every day, you are probably not very active. This has a cascading effect
on the brain. The more junk food you eat, the worse you begin to feel. The chemistry of the
brain is affected by these mood swings and might be one of the triggers that lead to depression.
A healthy and active lifestyle has been shown to go a long way in maintaining happiness.
But junk food doesn’t only have long-term effects
on your brain. It can also cause irreparable damage to your heart.
In fact, the most shocking part about eating a lot of junk food is that it can kill you.
So, if you are on a junk food diet, what we are about to tell you could save your life.
One of the long-term effects of all the salt and fats in junk food is that they can increase the
amount of low-density lipoprotein, also known as “bad” cholesterol, in your body. At the same time,
these same substances can lower your high-density lipoprotein or “good” cholesterol. The result of
these two shifts in cholesterol can lead to heart diseases and even heart attacks.
It is the increase in bad cholesterol along with the increase in blood pressure associated
with eating junk food that can put enormous strain on your heart. The heart is a strong
and resilient muscle, which is a good thing because it literally keeps blood, nutrients,
and oxygen flowing around your body. Without a happy heart, you can’t survive.
However, like any of your muscles, it can become overworked and tired. The problem with this is
that if your biceps get tired from lifting too much weight, it just means your workout is over.
If your heart becomes tired due to you gaining too much weight, a build-up of cholesterol,
and an increase in blood pressure means that you die. So, you can see why it is
so important to maintain a healthy lifestyle and diet instead of loading up on junk food every day.
It cannot be stressed enough how bad it is for your heart if all you eat is junk food.
You will likely be able to last a month or two on a junk-food-only diet before your
heart gives out completely. However, even if you decide to change your ways to save your life,
the damage has already been done. It will be a long uphill battle to get back to healthy
living. That being said, it most certainly can be done, and the sooner, the better.
The rest of your life will likely be spent monitoring your blood pressure and sodium levels.
You will probably have to choose everything that you put into your body carefully,
but this will go a long way towards keeping your heart healthy.
The American Heart Association recommends that adults consume less than 2,300 milligrams of
sodium per day. And this number is for someone who is relatively healthy and making good choices
as to what they put in their body. If you are eating only junk food, you are likely
not making good choices and consuming many times more sodium than recommended by the AHA. In fact,
one meal full of junk food would be enough to put you over the threshold, as a bag of chips
and a cheeseburger gets you to around 2,000 milligrams of sodium between the two of them.
If you are eating three meals a day filled with junk, you are consuming three times
as much sodium as recommended. This is a recipe for disaster. All of that salt
will make you feel bloated and tired. Which is your body's way of saying,
“knock it off with the junk food or there will be some serious consequences.”
So, your junk food diet has now negatively affected your pancreas, brain, and heart.
This should be enough to make you want to put down the candy bar and pick up a carrot.
But if not, there is even worse damage to come.
What if you couldn’t poop? Not only would you be uncomfortable, but you would have
a build-up of waste in your system that could cause some really nasty problems.
The main reason why junk food isn’t great for your digestive system is that it lacks fiber. Fiber is
a key component of healthy bowel movements. High amounts of fiber are found in foods like fruits,
veggies, beans, and oats. None of these ingredients are in your typical junk food diet.
What this means is that all those fats, salts, and sugars that you consume get backed up in
your digestive tract, where they sit until they become too much for the body to handle,
and they have to be evacuated. Unfortunately, they might not come out the end you want.
But the real problems begin with the constipation that results from only eating junk food.
Being constipated puts a lot of strain on your body, especially the digestive system,
which can lead to hemorrhoids and hernias.
It has also been found that junk food can be harmful to the microbiome in your body as well.
You have trillions of little bacteria that do important jobs inside your body,
especially when it comes to digestion. This means you want to keep these microorganisms
happy because if they’re not, they can begin to cause you some serious issues.
For example, if there are a lot of sugars and carbohydrates available,
certain bacteria might begin to grow uncontrollably. Most often the ones
that do this are not the helpful microorganisms. This can lead to fewer resources for your helpful
microbes. We are just beginning to understand how important a person's microbiome is,
but according to some scientists, it plays a major role in several processes throughout the body.
If your microbiome becomes damaged due to a poor diet it could initially lead
to a build-up of gasses and incredibly painful cramps as harmful bacteria begin to reproduce
inside of you. As time progresses you might find yourself in need of a fecal transplant
or any number of other unpleasant procedures to try and regrow a healthy microbiome once again.
One of the most frightening risks to your digestive system as a result of consuming too much
junk food is the development of diverticulitis. This disease happens when there is an infection
or inflammation in your intestines. It can end up being incredibly painful and include symptoms
such as fever and nausea as your body tries to fix the damage that’s been done to it. The worst part
is that the pain doesn’t go away overnight, and there is no quick fix. In extreme circumstances,
peritonitis can occur which is when an inflamed pouch in the digestive tract ruptures and spills
its contents into your midsection. This requires immediate medical attention.
If everything mentioned so far hasn’t made you change your mind about eating only junk food,
maybe cancer will. That’s right, new research suggests that a diet
full of junk food can actually increase your risk of cancer.
A 2019 study determined that a diet consisting of mainly junk food resulted in a weaker immune
system, higher rates of inflammation, more risk of developing allergies, and higher cancer rates.
Researchers think the low nutritional value of only eating junk food every day is what causes
these problems to occur. If you eat only junk food, your risk for colon, rectal, respiratory
tract, and stomach cancers all increase. Obviously, these are all extremely serious
and life-threatening, which should give you another incentive to refine your eating habits.
But some of the negative side effects of only eating junk food happen outside of your body.
Eating high cholesterol foods with lots of carbs can increase acne. This doesn’t just
happen to teenagers going through puberty, but to anyone who constantly eats junk food.
Even young children are at risk of skin diseases if they consume too much junk food.
One study found that adolescents who eat junk food three times a week are much more likely to develop
eczema than children on a healthy diet. These skin conditions are not life-threatening like many of
the other effects junk food has on your body, but they can also become irritating and uncomfortable.
Everything mentioned so far are the unpleasant consequences of a junk
food diet. But there is something else that is unavoidable with this lifestyle.
With high amounts of fats, sugars, and salts come high amounts of weight gain.
Obesity is a major problem that results from consuming too much junk food. If you gain
too much weight, your heart has to beat more frequently to circulate blood around the body,
your lungs need to suck in more air to get you the oxygen you need,
and your muscles need more energy to support your weight. Any of these
factors can eventually become too much for the body to handle and can cause it to shut down.
Eating junk food has also been connected to an increase in respiratory issues,
including asthma. This goes hand in hand with obesity as the airways and channels of your
circulatory and respiratory systems become constricted or blocked. All of these factors
increase your chances of having a heart attack, suffering from a stroke, or developing diabetes.
And the larger you become, the more calories your body will need to keep itself going.
This means you will need to eat more, and if you continue to eat only junk food,
there is only one inevitable outcome. An organ in your body will fail, and you will die.
So, what it comes down to is that you need to relinquish your junk food diet
immediately and switch to a healthy alternative.
We are not saying you can’t eat any junk foods. In fact, some research suggests that indulging in
junk food very occasionally may actually help with weight loss and can be a morale booster.
However, there is absolutely no benefit to only eating junk food.
So, the recommendation by some nutritionists is to allow yourself a junk food meal once every week
or two and savor it. But once you’ve had your fix, you should go back to eating healthy alternatives.
That being said, there are definitely some junk food options that are worse for you than others.
Here are five different ones that you probably didn’t know were causing your body distress.
Pizza is delicious; there is no denying it. However, not all pizza is created equal.
An average slice can contain 680 milligrams of sodium, 12 grams of fat, and 300 calories.
And when was the last time you just had one slice when you ordered pizza? To be fair,
there are some pizzas that are made with more fresh ingredients and less grease than others,
which adds nutritional value while reducing the “junk” part of the food.
On the other hand, a fast-food meal of burgers and fries has very little upside to it.
One of these meals can consist of 1,200 calories and up to 1,700 milligrams of sodium,
and that’s not even counting any drinks or dessert you’re going to have with it.
Basically, one fast-food burger puts you close to your recommended daily dose of sodium and
saturated fats, so hopefully, everything else you eat that day is made up of plants and fruits.
You might think having a homemade sandwich might be a healthy alternative to eating out
at a fast-food restaurant, but this might not necessarily be the case. Cold-cut meats
can contain large amounts of sodium. Three ounces of processed meat can have up to 1,300
milligrams of sodium, which means that if you're consuming a large deli sub every day for lunch,
your sodium levels, leading to your blood pressure potentially skyrocketing. Also, some research
suggests that when lunch meats aren’t processed or stored properly, they can contain nitrates and
nitrites, which are known carcinogens. To put it plainly processed meats might cause cancer.
If you’ve ever watched a hot dog eating contest, you’ve probably wondered how the contestants can
have so much of the universally loved fast food treat. What you probably didn’t know is that one
hot dog can contain half the amount of saturated fats you’re supposed to consume in a day. Also,
hot dogs are full of sodium to the point where a single hot dog can make up 33% of your allotted
daily sodium intake. This means those people who are eating dozens of hot dogs in a sitting
are literally consuming enough junk food to last them months. This may be an activity
that has one of the worst long-term effects on the body out of any competition in the world.
You can put anything that’s fried into the junk food category. And one of the
most common fried foods is chicken. It’s not the calories that make fried chicken so unhealthy,
but the amount of fat and salt in it. One piece of fried chicken can contain 34 grams
of fat and 1,200-plus milligrams of sodium. After just two pieces of fried chicken,
you’ve probably overshot your recommended fat and sodium intake for the day.
So, what is a junk food lover to do? We are going to say this again because it is so important.
Eating a junk food-only diet will end up killing you in one way or another.
Depending on who you are and how active your lifestyle is, you may be able to live
a couple of months if you only eat junk food. However, most medical professionals agree that
your body would give up sometime between 1 and 10 weeks if all you ate was junk food.
If you really need to get your junk-food-fix from time to time, that’s okay,
just don’t do it every day. Most nutritionists agree that having a cheat meal every now and then
is alright as long as the majority of your meals consist of healthy foods.
In order to protect yourself and the people you care about from succumbing to one of the
nasty side effects of eating too much junk food, there are a couple of things that can be done.
Education is always key. Make sure to read the food labels of the things you put into your body.
You may be surprised to find your favorite snack is incredibly high in salt or sugars,
and it may be time to cut back a bit. Also, it’s important that kids from a young age begin to
think about what is healthy versus what is not. Many people who rely heavily on junk
food for sustenance were never taught about the detrimental effects it can have on their bodies.
Therefore, cooking meals with a lot of vegetables, fruits, lean meats,
and fish is a great way to start introducing others to delicious foods that are good for them.
When making decisions about your own diet, some nutritionists recommend using the 80:20 rule.
This means that 80% of the food you eat should be healthy and full of nutrients,
while 20% can be from the junk food realm. Ideally,
you will find healthy foods that you enjoy and satisfy your hunger
so that more than 80% of your daily intake is from these sources, but this is not always possible.
Even if you try and eat one healthy meal every day, it can have a huge impact on your overall
health. Any reduction in junk food is going to be good for you, no matter how small.
As a rule of thumb, if you’re trying to stay away from junk food, you should cut fried foods,
highly processed foods, and anything with added salt and sugar from your diet.
And if you’re just not sure what the best options are,
don’t be afraid to ask your doctor. They will be able to point you in the right direction.
Now watch “What Happens To Your Body When You Stop Drinking Alcohol.”
Or check out “What Happens To Your Body If You Never Move.”