Mostly no.

It depends on what your health goals are: do you want to stay in “survival” mode (a.k.a. the Standard American Diet), eating just enough nutrients to keep yourself from major deficiency diseases like rickets and scurvy but feeling somewhat sick most of the time and running the risk of developing common ‘civilized’ deficiency diseases like cancer and diabetes?  Do you want be “sorta” healthy, eating good, nourishing foods when it’s convenient and junk when it’s not, and put up with varying levels of energy, minor illnesses and odds and ends breaking down in your body?  Or do you want to be as healthy as you can, with consistent energy, rare sicknesses and vibrant appearance?   You can probably guess how much junk food you should eat if you you’d like to be in the last category.

Our Perceptions Of Food

If we define food as that which nourishes and sustains our life, and anything else as that which is toxic and detracts from that life, then junk “food” certainly falls into the latter category.  Much of what passes for food today is actually poisonous, in the sense that it will break our body down instead of building it up.  The problem is that these toxic foodlike substances are extremely profitable, and the small group of giant food corporations in this county have found thousands of ways to make them palatable, attractive, and even addictive, while covering up the damage they do.

Does A Carrot Stick Cancel Out A Candy Bar?

Our toxin vs. nutrient intake doesn’t really work like a set of scales–as with everything else about the body, it’s a bit more complicated than that.  Ingested toxins are dealt with in various ways, depending on what they are and what state of health the body is in at the time, but if they’re not eliminated right away, most of the time they are stored in fatty, muscular, or other tissues to protect the rest of the body.  Others, such as the infamous free radicals, roam through the body, wreaking havoc on whichever cells it can steal an electron from.  Nutritious, beneficial foods will certainly help flush out the toxins and heal whatever damage they’ve caused, but not necessarily right away, and not necessarily in an equivalent amount.  For example, eating a big spinach salad with three slices of supreme pizza certainly won’t negate the calories, sodium, fats and nitrites in the pizza, though it is a little better than eating the pizza alone, since the salad will aid in digestion due to the enzymes in the raw spinach, and will contribute some nutrients.  Will the antioxidants in the spinach capture all the free radicals that could potentially be in the pizza?  Will the enzymes in the spinach help digest the two most difficult proteins to digest: casein (in the cheese) and gluten (in the crust)?  Will your gut assimilate all the nutrients in the salad, especially since casein leads to mucus production which blocks absorption?  Of course the answers will depend greatly on your state of health at the time (including how your digestive system is faring), what you’ve had to eat before, how much spinach vs. how much pizza you eat, and probably a few more factors.

All of these factors would be difficult, if not impossible to measure, especially at every meal, so the most beneficial act you can do for your body on this subject is not to try and “balance” all the junky non-foods you consume with healthy foods, but rather to simply cut the toxins in your life to an absolute minimum.  Any toxic substance you put into your body will need energy to be dealt with in one way or another, and wouldn’t you rather have that energy put to better uses, like clear skin, shiny hair, strong muscles and bones, a vigorous digestive system, and energy to do what you want to do?

In the same way, supplements don’t really justify eating junk, but they are very helpful in giving your body the materials it needs to be as healthy as it can be.

Photo credits:  technowannabe and Mr Jaded