Why is candy and chips, the sweets the salts and the fats, so tasty for humans compared to healthy snacks like a carrot? I mean why haven’t we created a healthy snack that everybody likes instead of injecting so much sugar in a simple oranje juice that is becomes kind of unhealthy? I am shocked by the duality of it all, something that tastes supernice is mostly superbad for our health 🙂 And i guess for animals it’s the same like you could feed any animal a bar of chocolate and he would eat it even if it probably poison him right? Is there a scientific explanation?
In: Biology
Tasty foods are not bad for you – quite the contrary. They are very good for you. The issue is that they are bad for you _in excess_.
For most of human history, getting enough food was a huge deal. We are genetically programmed to gorge ourselves on high-calorie, high-nutrient food (carbs, proteins, fats) when they are available because there would be times coming when they are not. Building up some fat reserves in the good times kept you alive in the bad times.
Things changed about 150 years ago – food is plentiful now (in the West at least) and we don’t need to gorge ourselves out of fear of not having a next meal. The problem is that the instinct hasn’t been bred out of us yet, so our bodies still gorge ourselves when the food is available, not knowing that there will always be a next meal readily available.
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