Why does food that is bad for you taste so good?

Question

I mean things like chocolate and cake.

I don't think there is any good tasting health food. The fat content theory sounds intresting.

Answer 1

It's all processed to taste sooooo good. Is there any good tasting healthy food or is that just an oxymoron?

Answer 2

Well, if you think what's in many of the things that are bad for us, they are things that would've been rare when people were evolving. Take sugar... it naturally occurs in many plants and plants exploit its sweet taste to fool us into helping them. You see, fruit contains seeds, so when animals eat fruit they're doing the plant a favor by taking the seeds to a new place and giving it some fertilizer on the way out (why do you think eating too much fruit makes you poop more?). Today we're wise enough to avoid the big seeds, but sugar still is tasty.

As for fatty things (things oils and butter and plain old fat), fat is high in energy and wasn't easy to get way back when. It tastes good because our bodies are programmed to know that it's a great source of energy that we didn't get very often (at least back then) and so when we could take down an animal, eating its fat was a real treat. Another example in the animal kingdom would be a white shark, in that white sharks keep their body temperature several degrees C above the ambient water temperature. Thus, they love to feed on baby seals because the baby seals are mostly fat, and the fat is so energy rich it allows the shark to move, think, and react faster by keeping a high body temperature. Thus, our bodies know fat is a good thing.

Also, think about what sugar and fat are. They are high energy products, and that's why they make us fat. You see, when you get too much fat or sugar, it's more than your body needs, so your body stores it, making us chubby. That's why excercise is essentially to becoming healthy as you're releasing all that stored energy from the excess fat and sugar you took in. Today we have easy access to both, but when we were evolving it took a lot to hunt down an animal and fruit wasn't always available, so we didn't really have much chance to get as chubby as we are today being we didn't have access to it. I hope that answered your question (and probably gave you some more things to think about too) :)

Answer 3

Most of the time it has a lot of sweet stuff in it like sugar or fake sugar which are both bad for you.
But dark chocolate is good and good for you, just as long as you don't eat to much of it.

Answer 4

Sugar, meaning they are SWEET. But why eat so much, you can have half a chocolate bar if you are overweight, twice a week, and a small piece of mouth-dropping cake. Why deprive ourselves of such things, we can control the amounts we take in.

Answer 5

I f you were a woman, I would say it was because our systems crave chocolate. Chocolate isn't really bad for you - just the sugars that are added in the chocolaty things we all like. Anything in moderation is okay.

Answer 6

It has to taste good so it gets you drawn to it. No one would buy snack cakes that tasted like eggplant would they? Well I'm sure some people would but not children who mostly buy this crap. It's because everything has to have something that makes you like it. in this case it's processed sugar and starch.

Answer 7

The answer is fat. The fat content in junk food is alot higher than bland food.Check into it... The foods you like that are not good for verses the diet foods etc......

Answer 8

Because companies know the better it tastes, the more likely someone is going to be to purchase it. Keep in fighting the good fight!

Answer 9

yea it sucks!
try eating sugar free "sweets" they might taste gross to you in the beginning, but after a while you get used to it. I swore I would never drink diet coke cause I hated the taste. But I love it now!

Answer 10

Very good design & marketing for enhanced sales.