Nothing makes you feel better about life than a delicious meal. Depression, self-loathing, thoughts of suicide. These things pale in comparison to a thick cut of sirloin, a heaping plate of Spaghetti Bolognese, a steaming bowl of Vietnamese Pho Tai Soup.

Add Sriracha sauce to that last one, and you’re no longer feeling awful, you’re feeling downright fucking spectacular.

Ask yourself the following question:

Do you ever feel more alive and more amenable towards life than those few supreme moments during and after the enjoyment of a sacrilegiously delicious meal? (Ironically, to me it’s akin to a religious experience).

The preceding dishes were just three of the meals that give me pure, unadulterated happiness. And at the risk of sounding self-indulgent, I am going to list the other seven of the top ten foods that—when cooked right and made with the best ingredients— make me want to live forever.

As you look at them, think about whether these particular foods make you feel the same way. What is on your list?

In no particular order:

-a spicy tuna roll, a spicy salmon roll, a spicy yellowtail roll and a bowl of miso soup, served by someone who speaks broken English. This meal makes me want to make out with said server.

Especially if it’s a chack.

-a pepper, onion, tomato and cheddar omelet from a breakfast coffee shop. When consumed hungover, this meal has often made me think about getting up, dancing, slapping someone in the face, then taking off my pants. I have yet to act on any of this. Yet.

-a ½ lb bacon cheeseburger and fries from a latenight diner in the middle of nowhere, CT. This meal is best enjoyed at 3 AM when returning from an evening at the blackjack tables at some scummy, upstate casino. The best part? Regardless of whether you have won or lost, the burger will either make you feel like more of a winner if you’re a winner, and less of a loser if you’re a loser.

Unless you lost all your money and your buddy has to pay for your food. Which is just degrading.

-shrimp scampi over linguini in Little Italy after bartering your way to a half-priced bottle of wine with the maître de in return for dining there. Nothing makes you feel more like a man than getting something out of nothing for doing what you were planning to do anyway.

-cornbread muffins. The kind your mom makes.

No insult intended. Seriously.

-shrimp and broccoli in spicy Szechuan sauce, served with brown rice in some tiny, shithole-of-a-basement-restaurant in Chinatown. They shuffle you in, you indulge, they shuffle you out, you indulge again when the fridge calls out its sweet hymn 2 hours later.

-a platter of beef fajitas so big and delicious it makes you want to simultaneously die and eat more as you crush your way through them.

Now this question:

Why is it such a catch-22 that God, the cruel, malevolent dictator he is, makes it so that the more of these delicious, life-loving foods we consume, the more overweight, unsightly, unhealthy, and ultimately—unhappy we become?

Because God is a bastard, that’s why.