Cornell Study: Junk Food Doesn’t Cause Obesity

Love to shovel absurd amounts of garbage food into your face? Don't worry: you're not going to get fat.

Well, you might get fat. But the latest research out of Cornell University suggests that junk food is, by and large, not to blame when it comes to our country's obesity epidemic:

While a diet of chocolate bars and cheeseburgers washed down with a Coke is inadvisable from a nutritional standpoint, these foods are not likely to be a leading cause of obesity.

The real issue is far less about what you eat and how much you eat:

Indulging in those tasty albeit non-ideal food choices is often derided as a sure-fire way to become obese. However, those categorized as healthy weight and obese individuals consume nearly identical amounts on average, according to the study, published in the journal Obesity Science & Practice.

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“By targeting just these vilified foods, we are creating policies that are not just highly ineffective, but may be self-defeating as it distracts from the real underlying causes of obesity.”

So the moral of the story? Policy designed to curb consumers' appetites for junk food, sodas, and other similar approaches simply won't work, because the root cause is the amount of food we consume and not the specific foods. Our sedentary lifestyles and lack of integrating healthier options like fruits and vegetables into our lives is what causes the most problems.

And with that, I'm off to grab myself a Cherry Coke and a cheeseburger.