Junk food is fast emerging as a serious
health hazard. It is a major cause of obesity, which is rapidly becoming a
leading global cause of avoidable death.
Regulated eating can counter obesity, but
many people can’t regulate themselves.
Why?
Because they often try to change their
eating without changing their thinking, especially their thinking about what
comprises enjoyment.
Trying to extract extra enjoyment by
stimulating the senses more is like throwing a boulder on a sponge to squeeze
out more water.
Their definition of enjoyment is determined
by the culture’s prominent mode: passion. This mode fills their brain with the
junk belief that extravagant sensual stimulation is the expressway to
enjoyment. This belief is junk because the senses’ capacity to provide
enjoyment is limited, like the amount of water in a sponge. Trying to extract
extra enjoyment by stimulating the senses more is like throwing a boulder on a
sponge to squeeze out more water. A little more water may come, but the sponge
ends tattered. Similarly, excessive sensual stimulation may bring a little more
pleasure, but it leaves the body damaged.
The Bhagavad-gita (17.09) states that foods
providing excessive sensual stimulation are in the mode of passion, and cause
distress and disease. This could well be a description of junk food, which is
known to lure with its surplus of stimulants such as salt, sugar and fat.
As long as people buy into the junk belief
that greater sensual stimulation means more enjoyment, they will fall for junk
food unthinkingly and sometimes even unwillingly. That’s why lasting solution
requires a revision of their definition of enjoyment.
For those seeking such revision, Gita
wisdom offers systematic education about their true identity as souls and the
supreme happiness available in spiritual love for Krishna. That lasting
fulfillment is the essential fruit of Gita wisdom with freedom from the lure of
junk food being an incidental benefit.
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