Why does food that tastes the best usually the worst for you?

Question

Why is it that taste is our biggest downfall when it comes to eating healthy.

I'm pretty sure if ate ONLY broccoli for the next year, a hot fudge sunday would still taste better.

Answer 1

Evolutionarily, the body has developed senses to guide it towards activities required to sustain life. For example, we get hungry, we become restless and look for food until the need is met. We get randy, we hunt for mating partners until the need need is met (and in a genetic sense the potential for propogation of one's genetic immortality).
Each time a need is satiated we become tired and rest.
Obviously the complexity of any animals behaviour is much more complicated than this but this sets the scene to answer your question.

On a physiological level, the body needs varying nutrients in varying amounts at different times and to different degrees according to physiological demands imposed upon the body by environment. Different bodies are all slightly differently built so these needs can vary a lot from person to person.

Hence we are geared up to like certyain tastes more than others because in the raw world of nature we rarely find refined sources of individual ingredients to satiate our needs. Fats, for example, are a good source of energy and hence we often desire fatty foods, we are geared to find them tasty; just as we find glucose rich foods appealing (sugar = energy).

The problem is that none of these individual products, in the context of a BALANCED DIET, actually are bad for us. It is only when they are available in concentration, artificially refined and distilled from all the other food groups they are usually mixed with in nature, that we have the chance to consume them in isolation.

In other words, it tastes good because my body likes it (evolution). Why hunt for it when I can saturate my desires with a refined source (modern food products/fast food etc.). Consequence: monodiet (or at least in a practical sense, what may as well be a mono-diet). No exclusive diet is good for anyone, the excesses are greater than the body can properly process (hence the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes) yet they lack other essential micronutrients (ie vitamins and minerals) or balanced intake of other macronutrients from a balanced diet.

Moreover, the human species is ill fated with an awareness of its social context and utilises the ability to manipulate its diet for social gain; again to extremes that make no physiological sense (eg the anorexic supermodel, the mesomorphic athlete).

Extremes and exclusivity are not what the homo sapiens evolved to cope with, hence the current selection pressures it faces in such and environment (ie ill health, unnecessary mortality). However, because this does not often impede reproductive function by the age of most people starting families, we fail to select out the permutations unable to adapt to this environment.
(ie The selection pressure is unable to promote evolution of the animal as the damaging effects are exerted after the age at which the real biologically immortal unit of DNA is passed on)

In short, we like what we need but what we need is available in excess and out of context to the environment we evolved to cope with. We suffer because our bodies are relatively evolutionarily redundant in the new environment our social interaction and intelligence has created.

The real winner here is the animal who evolves the insight to see this and adapt to it.

So rise above your feral instincts and see the need for moderation and sensible eating; forget faddy diets, forget media propagated health scares; get educated and orchestrate your own life rather than being led like sheep by the blind ram represened by the voice of mass media.

Philosophical maybe, but does that answer your question?

Answer 2

The food that tastes best is what we eat the most. Fats and sugars are actually good for us in proper amounts; we are designed to want energy rich foods. It is part of survival. With the advent of industrialized farming, however, we are able to produce far more food than we need. It is excessive fat and sugar that is bad for you, not fat and sugar. We eat to much of what we like, which is bad for us.

Answer 3

Our instinct cries out for the foods which will provide us with the most fats, sugars and salts.
It's an ancient survival mechanism we haven't evolved out of yet.

Answer 4

You learned to like those food. You must relearn on eating good food and eventually you will think it taste good too.

Answer 5

For the same reason that smoking pot makes you feel good and kills all your brain cells, I wish it was all healthy, espeically Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream and weed.

lol