Food taste vs nutritional value

[hewo]

Why is it that we tend to prefer the taste and experience of eating food that is considered 'bad' for us? Although many people enjoy eating fruit and vegetables, it's really high-fat foods like chocolate, bacon and pizza that are generally considered to be nice but naughty.

Should we not have evolved to actually prefer eating salad, fruit and veg most of the time?

[OBonio]

I was wondering this other day whilst tucking into a Chicken Tikka Massala. Fantastic food, but zero goodness :o(

[fo3nix]

I may be wrong here (I'm no biologist), but here's my theory:

While we have evolved in certain ways, to cope with mathematics and such, our brains still function very simply, like cavemen.

So picture a caveman, eating regularly (a few times a day say). His brain recognises this, and realises that if he's eating regularly, there must be plenty of food about. So your brain sends out signals to make you want to eat fatty stuff, in order to stock up food in your body (i.e. fat reserves) for when the food isn't so plentiful. Like squirrels saving for the winter. The problem of course is that right now, there is plenty of food available because we have McDonald's and Tesco etc. The fruit and veg stuff is nice, but there are two tihngs about this:

1) it isn't high fat, so isn't good for storing reserves

2) if you eat something that you don't like, then by eating it regularly enough, you'll grow to like the taste of it (hence how babies and kids like stuff they didn't at first). This is again your brain at work, because if you're eating something a lot of the time, your brain assumes that that's all that is available to eat right now, so you'd better get used to it and like it. Now, we eat fatty foods probably just as regularly as low fat foods, and if anything perhaps pizza, chocolate and the like a little bit more. so by eating more of it we grow to like it more, which means we eat more of it, etc. a viscious circle.

The sangri-la diet exploits this to its advantage.

[Clanad]

Could be, but I think it's much simpler than that. Purveyors of those types of food spend millions searching for the right "mouth feel". Fat, for one thing, helps provide that sensation. High fat ice cream, for example is much more desirable as a taste sensation than that with little or no fat. Salt is another enhancer. Bacon, potato chips (crisps?) and other such diet wrecking foods are always high in salt. Hence, I tend to believe it's just the taste of things that entice us...

[Gef]

Sorry hewo but your question is flawed. Bacon and pizza are not necessarily naughty. In fact a good pizza could be the ideal meal. Lots of carbs from the bread, protein from the meat and plenty of veg.

Also you must remember that our anscestors could not go to the supermarket and buy lovely fruits such as pineapple, oranges, etc.etc. They ate what was available and then learned how to kill animals. Meat is good for us as it contains all the amino acods we need to make our own protein.

As for chocolate. Well it's 'man-made' and designed to be addictive. A bit of chocolate does no harm at all :-)

[stevie21]

"Should we not have evolved to actually prefer eating salad, fruit and veg most of the time?"

I think I have :(
I think some "foods" like bacon are repulsive and I'd much rather eat some lovely fish or pasta or a salad.

Or a chicken kebab.