eli5 Why healthy food isn’t as good as fast food?
In: Other
someone else said it already, but I’ll try explaining it myself
our early human ancestors obviously did not have fast food. they had to scavenge and hunt for their food, and had to eat whatever they could find in the wild.
in nature, foods that have things like fat or sugar would be things like meat or fruit, both of which are relatively energy-rich compared to gathered foliage.
salt, though not particularly energy-rich, is an important nutrient for our body and one of the few nutrients that is not really in much of the food we would have eaten, as any organism that takes in salt will just process it, since they need the nutrients too.
so our brains evolved to really enjoy fat, salt, and sugar, as they represented either calorie-dense foods that would give you the energy to keep going, or a vital nutrient that you can’t get anywhere else.
fast food just loads you up with some one of the three and manipulates your monkey-brain into thinking that you’re getting really awesome food that could keep you chasing mammoths for weeks.
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