It’s very simple - several of the delicacies you list are part of your basic food groups. They are intended to keep us healthy and help us grow - specifically cold breakfast cereals, pizza, and soda. Personally, I would add White Castle cheeseburgers to that list of delicacies

We are a very adaptable species. I'm grateful to have been brought up in a healthy environment, but I agree genetics has a lot to do with wellness. Like everything else, nature/nurture at work!

Genetics and luck of the draw. We see many seemingly healthy individuals eating a good diet, exercising and doing all the right things and yet dying in their 50's or earlier from heart attack or disease. While at the same time seeing overweight, out of shape, eating junk foods and not taking care of themselves living into their 80's. Bigger factors are at play other than diet.

Better Medicine
 

Better medicine is the answer. I know that in my parent's day that the medical problems I have lived through would have killed them at an early age. In fact, it did. I'll bet most of us with bad diets have survived a medical problem that would have been deadly 25 or 30 years ago.

I think the chemical makeup of our food has change. Screwing around with nature and putting additives in food is bound to cause problems.

For the last five years there has been no partially hydrogenated oils in coffee creamer or microwave popcorn or any food sold in the US. Trans fat has been banned in the U.S. and partially hydrogenated oils were a major source of that.

You will see palm oil, palm kernel oil, and hydrogenated oil (has no trans) on your food labels now.

As a PhD biologist, I can speak with authority in noting your failure to place beer appropriately at the peak of the food pyramid. Pleaae don't feel bad - our USDA bureaucrats failed similarly on their adoption of this useless cartoon.

I believe most people are predisposed to health problems more than others.
I'm 73 and have never eaten what the 'experts' say you should eat. I eat massive amounts of salt along with red meat (med rare) and all the other bad things. I usually only eat 1 meal a day now. I take zero medications.
Just saying that some people don't need to sweat their diet. I'm very fortunate and I wish everyone had my metabolism.

Biochemistry
 

Interesting about the "gain weight regardless of discipline". Have never been able to get to the bottom of that one. Could be so, I suppose. But for me, "fat shaming" (self imposed) is my only means of dealing with that "discipline" thing - and it *can* work, when my priorities (and mood) are so aligned.

What I find concerning when I read opinions about "nutrition" are how rarely the basic terms fats, proteins, and carbohydrates are mentioned. I believe all those "bad" foods contain those three items. The "bad" aspects of those would seem to me to be the sugars from the carbohydrate category. A case can definitely be made for too much sugar being problematic for most humans. Have seen no convincing evidence that one kind of sugar is any worse than another, despite how the word "fructose" gets pontificated about. :-)

As for vitamins and minerals, yeah you need enough vitamins for preventing beriberi, scurvy, etc., but I've never read where "additional" vitamins serve any proven purpose. Salt, in excess, is problematic for those with certain kinds of blood pressure issues, but I salt my country ham. :-) Seem to be (mostly) immune to BP problems. One should always acquire the right genes, right from the start.

Got curious enough about the expression "processed foods" recently to visit the google about them. Best I can tell, the "processes" are things that make stuff taste really good. Shame on them. :-) And, how can the government be allowing humans to make their own decisions about such matters?? Been kinda wondering what percentage of these treats are found in bags and can be eaten with the fingers. . . That "cookies and chips" aisle must definitely be avoided when I go on one of these "discipline" tears.

Anyway, them's *my* opinions. Now wondering what percentage of folks who lecture us about "nutrition" have even a rudimentary understanding of physiology and biochemistry. . .

Mom survived for 16 years from this dreadful disease with the help of myself and Dad. Now I just have my 90 year old Dad. I feed him fairly healthy, but he loves his soft drinks, cookies and ice cream!

Dreadful is right. Dementia is a thief, stealing what makes us, us, over time. Unfortunately the "miracle" of modern medicine has drawn out that time by years--often a decade--beyond the time when natural processes would have killed us.

Dad had dementia. Parkinson-related. From the time he was diagnosed to the day he died was eleven years. six of them in a nursing home. It was hard on Mom; she and my sister cared for dad at home for as long as possible but often the onset of dementia can include violence, which is what happened. Fortunately the nursing home where he spent his last years was in Las Vegas, state-of-the-art, and only a few miles away from the home of my sister so she and Mom could visit Dad frequently, monitoring his care and making sure things went as they should.

I remember my wife telling Mom how sorry she was about Dad. I'll always remember her reply. "The man I knew died years ago".

The recommendations are for the general population to live longer, better
 

As has been pointed out, a lifetime of eating all these and more food will catch to "most" people, not "all" people. It will make your later years less healthy and productive and a series of daily pills like my mother took after a lifetime of poor health choices.

That said, for every recommendation or rule, there is always an exception that we all can think of. We all know the folks who have smoked for decades and never had a cold, let alone lung cancer.

And - I stopped drinking soda most of the time decades ago and lost ten pounds in two months. I stopped hydrogenated oils decades ago and I lost more weight and my skin cleared up and my cholesterol dropped.

I don't eat popcorn much anymore because at my age the stuff gets stuck in my gums!

Anyway, everything in moderation. Life is a journey, and the recommendations are trying to make it a better one. It is our choice to eat better or not.

Wait, are they bad??

When you die you have no idea if the foods you have eaten in later life sped it up. So go ahead.......In years to come foods will be more connected to diseases than they are now. Diet plus meds important.

Not the same food
 

When we were growing up, food did not have all the chemicals in it that it has now. We are eating mostly fake foods that lack the nutritional value to sustain a healthy body and mind. As a nation, we consume more pharmaceuticals than any other country, yet we are the sickest nation in the world. Everything you eat, drink, swallow and inhale has a direct effect on how we think and act and feel every minute of every day of our lives. Eating real food, mostly organic and local is best. The whiter the bread, the sooner your dead. Most of the wheat bread is just Carmel colored white bread.