# Why does unhealthy food taste good and healthy food taste bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 30, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019 "2013-09-30T17:30:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![AnthonyElite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b487fb/32.png) [@AnthonyElite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnthonyElite)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2013, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/41 "2013-10-01T14:19:36Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Because salt, sugar and fat are GOOD for you. > > Before modern technology and economics made these plentifully available and cheap, they were relatively scarce and hard to come by. It makes sense from an adaptation standard to motivate us to look for them, because man does not live by celery alone. Since finding food back in the day took a lot of work, the reward from flavor was probably quite important in helping us to eat nutrient dense foods. > > Of course, in a modern environment, you can exchange thirty of minutes of labor for 1500 calories of burgers, fries and soda. That’s not the environment that taste buds were adapted for. > > To ask why these foods are bad for you is like asking why water is vital to health, yet we can also drown in water. The answer is all about quantity. This is it right here. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2013, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/42 "2013-10-01T22:00:17Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > Correlation does not equal causation. You can get mad and try to personally insult me, but that won’t change the facts. > > And fruit will never compete with pastries, etc. on price. Why? Grain subsidies, plus the fact that ripe fruit doesn’t travel well. Also fruit doesn’t taste as good as pastries. You keep forgetting that part. If fruit tasted as good as pastries, grocery stores would sell more of them. ---
**Author:** ![Werekoala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@Werekoala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Werekoala)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2013, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/43 "2013-10-02T02:06:35Z")
Most of the above is, to me, accurate. But I always fall back on the master’s comments when it comes to this. Stage one of Human Evolution: What can we eat? Stage Two: Why do we eat? Stage Three: Where shall we have lunch? It’s all about availability and productivity. Human civilization has evolved from a hand-to-mouth survival model to one where we preferentially choose for, cultivate, and breed things we LIKE to eat. Hundreds of generations of our ancestors decided what you find in your grocery store or on your plate, and we eat what we like. Calorie-dense foods, carbohydrates, sugars, etc. - the things that our plains ancestors would have (literally) killed for that we can find on the shelf of any convenience store, much less a grocer or specialty food store, for a few cents a pound. I agree with whoever said it up-thread; there may come a time (and really ,we’re there in some hipster-inspired ways) where we crave radishes or carrot-analogues in a few thousand years. But I doubt we’ll ever lose our preference for fats and sugars. ---
**Author:** ![stui\_magpie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stui_magpie/32/11010_2.png) [@stui\_magpie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stui_magpie)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/44 "2013-10-02T03:01:09Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Because salt, sugar and fat are GOOD for you. > > Before modern technology and economics made these plentifully available and cheap, they were relatively scarce and hard to come by. It makes sense from an adaptation standard to motivate us to look for them, because man does not live by celery alone. Since finding food back in the day took a lot of work, the reward from flavor was probably quite important in helping us to eat nutrient dense foods. > > Of course, in a modern environment, you can exchange thirty of minutes of labor for 1500 calories of burgers, fries and soda. That’s not the environment that taste buds were adapted for. > > To ask why these foods are bad for you is like asking why water is vital to health, yet we can also drown in water. The answer is all about quantity. To extrapolate that slightly, when people started making processed food for sale for profit they hone in on making it taste good so it will sell. More sales, more profits. Less profit in making healthy food that tastes crap when you can load up the processed food with salt, fat and sugar and sell heaps of it. So most of the convenience food that now dominates the market in take away food places and pre prepared stuff in supermarkets has been built for taste, not health or balance. As you say, the problem is quantity. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2013, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/45 "2013-10-02T04:05:15Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > I’ve got to disagree, at least partially. > > I’ve done a number of jobs that involve a fair amount of physical activity. Not aerobic activity, just plenty of walking, some moderately heavy lifting, etc… > > I used to wonder why SOOO many of the guys who do these kinds of jobs have such huge guts spilling over the top of their pants. Not necessarily fat all over, just really big guts. > > After a while, I realized it’s because the physical activity just ramps up your appetite. You end up eating so much more because you’re hungrier, that it sort of balances out, really. The only reason I’m not fat is because I almost never eat grains. I definitely get about 5-10 pounds heavier when I’m doing a more physical job, though, just because I’m so much hungrier that I eat a _lot_ more. Interesting…but I guess my observation is that your classic blue collar worker (a mover, say) does plenty of isometric stuff and almost nothing even minimally aerobic for any duration. Sure; some huffing and puffing during a heavy lift, but then back to sedentary. And off hours, plenty of couch/food/beer combo. I think what is best for us is probably moderate walking all day long. And I don’t equate “fat” with poor health, per se, any more than thin means good health. If your BP, blood sugar and lipid levels are good, I’m not sure a beer belly is bad. It is true that they correlate, but not always. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2013, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/46 "2013-10-02T06:44:36Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > I’m not basing my entire conclusion on my lack of excess fat. I’m also basing it on the fact that cows/pigs/poultry are all fed HUGE amounts of grain _specifically_ to make them fatter. It’s not done that way because it doesn’t work. It’s done because it works. > [@get\_lives](#): > > Many excessively-processed foods would work, absolutely. However, you will never get a cow as fat on grass as you will on grains. It’s not grain, per se, that is to blame. You even emphasized the important word there: “HUGE amounts”. And then your almost admitting your claims for the fattening effects of grain are overblown, but confuse the issue with the nonsense-term “excessively-processed”. Grass wouldn’t be an option because it’s less energy dense, grain is quite energy dense even with minimal processing. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2013, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/47 "2013-10-02T06:57:04Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > Nobody wants straight-up grains. The mixing of the fat, sugar, and grains all together is what tickles the taste buds and stimulates people to eat far too much. > > I mean, try to eat a bowl of brown rice by itself. Not so great, unless you’re really hungry. Add some butter and sugar, and suddenly it’s much easier. Then why are you blaming grains? Oh, wait, you attempted an explanation for that earlier. “Pure fat and sugar by themselves are not all that appetizing” Have you looked at the ingredients for ice cream or chocolate? We’re not contesting that a diet high in grains can get you fat, we’re contesting your claim that grains and starches are more to blame, by virtue of properties besides the caloric content, than the the easy access to other high caloric ingredients. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2013, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/48 "2013-10-02T07:23:47Z")
As mentioned above, fat isn’t bad for you. Actually, [you can die without enough fat in your diet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation). ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/49 "2013-10-02T15:14:58Z")
Think of Ogg the caveman, living thousands of years ago. If he had a craving for something sweet, what would he do? He’d seek out some fruits or berries, which would give his body the vitamins it needed. If he had a craving for salt, what would he do? Just like a deer or buffalo, he’d probably head for a salt lick. That would have given his body the salt it needed. If he liked the taste of fat, what would he do? He’d kill an animal, and eat some fat along with the meat. That would give him the fat he needed to keep warm during the winter months. So, Ogg’s taste buds were steering him in the right direction. And Ogg’s descendants’ taste buds did them no harm at all, for centuries. Until VERY recently in human history, a perpetual surplus of food was not a problem. Today, if we crave sugar, salt and fat, we can get a Whopper with cheese, French fries and a chocolate shake. Worse yet, most of us can get as many Whoppers and as many shakes as we want WHENEVER we want. Ogg didn’t have that problem. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/50 "2013-10-03T01:23:11Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Think of Ogg the caveman, living thousands of years ago. He went on to become a public domain digital-audio format, right? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2013, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/51 "2013-10-03T08:44:39Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > Many excessively-processed foods would work, absolutely. However, you will never get a cow as fat on grass as you will on grains. Care to put money on that? 😉 You name the amount, I’ll bring the references to the best animal husbandry journals and research institutions. > [@](#): > > We’re sickening and killing ourselves because grains are so cheap… No, as others have repeatedly pointed out, it’s not the grains, it’s the fat and sugar. Grains play a relatively minor role in weight gain. > [@](#): > > …and they’re cheap partly because the government subsidize them so heavily So how do you explain that grains in places like Australia, where there are no subsidies, are even cheaper than in the US? US grain subsidies reduce the price of US produced grain and allow it to force out imported grain. If the subsidies ceased, grain prices would probably fall. AT worst they would remain static. IOW, grains are not in any way cheap because governments subsidise them. Grains are cheap because they cost SFA to produce, are easy to process and store indefinitely. > [@](#): > > I might spend a lot on my food, but I look 8-10 years younger than my age, and I feel more like 15 years younger than my age. I live on a diet of exclusively GM corn, and I look 20 years younger than my age and feel 30 years younger. You do realise that internet anecdotes are worthless, right? ---
**Author:** ![TheFireMage100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eb9ed0/32.png) [@TheFireMage100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheFireMage100)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/52 "2015-08-18T17:50:50Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > I’m more flexible, my muscles recover from heavy exercise more quickly, and I have a _LOT_ more energy. Time to join in I guess. Weren’t you just saying grain is high in calories? If this was so you wouldn’t have more energy. I’m sorry if my logic is flawed but this is just an observation. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2015, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/53 "2015-08-18T19:17:27Z")
> [@TheFireMage100](#): > > Time to join in I guess. Weren’t you just saying grain is high in calories? If this was so you wouldn’t have more energy. I’m sorry if my logic is flawed but this is just an observation. If you include “nearly two and a half years ago” in your definition of “just”, your snark would be on point. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2015, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/54 "2015-08-18T21:28:22Z")
I think I’ve gained 20 lbs since this thread was active! Must be all that opium in grain. ---
**Author:** ![skdo23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@skdo23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skdo23)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2015, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/55 "2015-08-19T00:26:09Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Because salt, sugar and fat are GOOD for you. > > Before modern technology and economics made these plentifully available and cheap, they were relatively scarce and hard to come by. It makes sense from an adaptation standard to motivate us to look for them, because man does not live by celery alone. Since finding food back in the day took a lot of work, the reward from flavor was probably quite important in helping us to eat nutrient dense foods. > > Of course, in a modern environment, you can exchange thirty of minutes of labor for 1500 calories of burgers, fries and soda. That’s not the environment that taste buds were adapted for. > > To ask why these foods are bad for you is like asking why water is vital to health, yet we can also drown in water. The answer is all about quantity. This. The choice b/w Burger King vs. lowfat yogurt for lunch has not existed long enough to play a role in the natural selection process. Our taste buds are still trying to convince us to go stalk and kill a protein rich saber toothed tiger with a pointy stick rather than play it safe and fill up on the grass growing outside of the cave. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2015, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/56 "2015-08-19T01:19:33Z")
I hear brains are high in fat. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2015, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/57 "2015-08-19T01:48:45Z")
> [@CoastalMaineiac](#): > > Broccoli and peas, for example, don’t have much of a taste on their own. I’ll give you peas, but _broccoli_? Broccoli can die in a fire. My mother insisted on forcing broccoli down my throat because, “IT’S GOOD FOR YOU!” No, something “good for me” shouldn’t taste so foul and bitter that my body violently reacts to it with explosive vomiting. Even today, after 32 years as a professional cook, I hate having anything to do with broccoli, because even the smell of it is almost enough to make me vomit. You know what vegetable I never got as a child? Asparagus. And it wasn’t served in most of the places I’ve cooked. I ate my first asparagus just a few years ago (when I was over 40), while cooking at my city’s convention center. Wow, that’s some good shit. > [@naita](#): > > 1. “healthy” foods don’t inherently taste bad, but some people aren’t habituated to eating them in childhood, and _are_ habituated to eating fat and sugar in excess, which makes the healthy foods taste bad to those people. Oh no. I was “habituated” to eating broccoli (and beets) in childhood, and I still hate it to this day. And as a child, my mom kept me away from excess sugar and fat. Broccoli still tastes vile. I recently had a conversation with my now-elderly mom about vegetables, and I told her about some other vegetables that are “good for you”, which she never fed me because she didn’t like them: Onions and peppers. I don’t really blame her; she grew up with a father who only wanted to eat stuff like roast beef and potatoes, and her mother obliged by cooking bland food, so that’s what my mom was used to. I discovered, when my grandmother was in her 80s, that Grandma absolutely _loved_ hot and spicy food. She just couldn’t cook it for Grandpa and my mom back in the 1940s & 1950s. And that’s why I became a professional cook. I wanted food with flavor. I still admire my grandmother, who passed away 14 years ago. Her doctor put her on a special diet. One day, she looked sadly at her plate, with tiny portions of bland food, and she said, “I’m 89 years old. How much longer do I have? I’m going to eat what I want.” ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2015, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/58 "2015-08-19T06:51:00Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Oh no. I was “habituated” to eating broccoli (and beets) in childhood, and I still hate it to this day. And as a child, my mom kept me away from excess sugar and fat. Broccoli still tastes vile. I didn’t write that every healthy ingredient tastes good, the point was that there is no inherent bad taste to healthy. But by all means, lets keep this zombie alive to discuss your personal taste in vegetables. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2015, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019/59 "2015-08-19T12:53:51Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > This is absolutely not supported by the facts. Primates had been evolving bigger brains for millions of years before the use of fire. In addition, the tendency toward larger brains has been a rough trend for literally hundreds of millions of years. Dinosaurs were headed in that direction before they were wiped out, for instance. Your source has mixed up causation and correlation. > And it’s not the fats and sugars that are doing the bulk work of making people fat. It’s the grains. They’re bland, especially when refined and cooked, and make a deadly combination with foods used along with them. Pure fat and sugar by themselves are not all that appetizing…but throw some refined grains in there to cut the richness, and suddenly you can put away 2 or 3 times the calories. It all depends on what you mean by “grow bigger brains”. Yes, primates had been growing bigger brains for tens of millions of years. A chimp has a fairly large brain, but only about a quarter of the size of human brains. Then about 800,000 years ago, one genus of primates rather suddenly took off. What happened 800,000 years ago? Two things: we were eating meat (although that wasn’t exactly new) and we started cooking our foods, which made a lot more calories available. There was an interesting article in the Science Times yesterday relevant to this. There is an enzyme, amylase, that we use to convert starches to sugars. It is amylase in your saliva that makes bread gradually taste sweet as you chew it. Well, chimps have the usual two genes (one from each parent) for the manufacture of amylase, while humans have many more copies of the gene, up to 18 copies, according to the article. This appears to have evolved in response to the remarkable increase in available starch, made avaiable from cooking. To get back to the OP, natural foods are what they are. Artificial foods are engineered to maximal taste. Natural foods have every interest in not tasting great. Processed foods have the opposite interest. Think how much processing chocolate has to go through to become edible. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-unhealthy-food-taste-good-and-healthy-food-taste-bad/670019.md?page=2)