We are all very familiar with the four food groups on which we were weaned and have likely been filling up on ever since.

There is another food group that has grown in popularity over the last 50 years but was never crowned officially as a food group.

This food group crowds the shelves in grocery stores and in many of our kitchen cupboards. It is popular in the schools and in our childrens lunches. It is a big hit on Super Bowl Sunday, every Sunday, and every day for that matter. It is the most popular snack food.

What could the fifth food group be?

It is junk food.

Junk food by definition means food that has no nutritional value, and, worse, it robs you of life-suppporting and life-saving nutrientscompromising your health and fitness.

Junk food is high in fat, high in sugar and/or salt, high in chemicals, and high in calories.

Junk food comes in the form of chips, pretzels, salty snack foods, pizza, candy, cookies, cake, ice cream, pie, muffins, doughnuts, pastries, and sweet desserts of all kinds,.

We all know what junk foods are, and we all know how much junk food we eat. Even a little is too much, and the average American doesnt eat a little bit of junk food. The average American eats a lot of junk food.

Junk food has absolutely no nutrition, but fills up the average American with fat, sugar, salt, hydrogenated fat, chemicals, and calories. If we are full of junk foods, then theres little room for the best fuel for human health, fitness, and lifefruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans.

And lets not forget that included with the junk foods are junk drinks. Junk drinks are full of sugar and chemicals. They are heated in the canning or jarring process and most of their nutrition, vitamins and minerals, are lost or denatured. Other drinks, such as vegetable juices, are loaded with salt.

Junk drinks also have an excess of calories that most of us dont want and because of all the chemicals in these juices, they can be toxic to the body.

Lets take a closer look at some junk drinks.

Pop or soda.

The average American drinks 300 bottles or cans of pop every year. Aside from the fact that pop is one big manmade chemical drink that is very toxic to the body, each bottle or can contains about 10 teaspoons of refined sugar. Refined sugar is detrimental to human health and fitness also.

And is there any wonder that there is a direct correlation between the amount of pop a teenager drinks and how overweight that teenager becomes?

And as for diet popsome would convincingly argue that diet pop is much worse for you than the sugared pop.

Aspartame, the main sugar substitute, found in sugar substitutes such as NutraSweet and Equal, is thought to cause dozens of problems, too many to mention here, but a few being headaches, dizziness, joint pain, spasms, nausea, anxiety, depression, diarrhea, insomnia, weakness, chest pain, seizures, fatigue, neurological diseases, and dozens more and some of them way worse then the ones I have mentioned.

By the way, aspartame has been shown in studies that animals actually gain weight eating aspartame because it increases the appetite. Whoa! Did you catch that? Aspartame increases the appetite for sugar and refined carbohydrates.

Commercial drinks like Snapple or any canned or bottled commercial drinks that are loaded with sugar and chemicals.

Juice drinksthose drinks that claim to be all juice but often contain sugar and are so refined, filtered, and cooked that they have little nutritional value and contain a lot of calories

Sports drinksreading the labels reveals that sports drinks are made of water, sugar, chemicals, and dye to make them green or yellow or whatever color they happen to be

Milk-based drinks such as milk shakes, protein drinks, or commercial drinks that contain milk

Caffeinated drinks like coffee, tea, and, pop ouch, that one hurts

And, of course, alcohol. Alcohol even in small quantities is very toxic and also contains chemicals and calories.

If you eliminate all of these drinks that are void of nutrition and high in calories, salt or sugar, and chemicals, then what is left to drink? Its simple.

Drink pure water and water in its purest and most nutritious formthe juice that you make yourself from fresh, whole fruits and vegetables.

So drink up to a long life of health and fitness with fresh fruit and vegetable juices and a healthful diet of whole, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, raw nuts and seeds, and whole legumes.

Follow a very simple rule to get away from well-loved junk foods:

Fill up on the most nutritious foods first. Then you will have no room for that fifth food groupjunk food.