Wouldn’t our bodies recognize which foods that are most beneficial and demand to have more of that?
In: Biology
What makes chocolate, soda, and candy all unhealthy is that they contain a lot of refined sugars. Refined sugars don’t make you feel full when you eat them, and they get absorbed into the body really quickly so what happens is that it’s very easy to eat far more calories than you need when foods are loaded with refined sugars and the body struggles to process them as quickly as they’re being absorbed.
In the wild, sugar generally comes with a lot of fiber and other substances which do make you feel full (compare drinking soda or eating candy to eating fruit) so it’s harder to overeat, and the fiber slows down how quickly the body absorbs the sugar.
As for taste, part of it is that people evolved to crave energy-dense sources of food like sugars and fats, but part of it is also cultural and economic. In the United States in particular, there is an insane amount of added sugars in everything so people are used to things being very sweet.
The availability and quality of fresh produce matters a lot too. A lot of fruits and vegetables have to be shipped quite a long distance, often by ship in order to be economically viable so they’re picked before they’re ripe and then artificially ripened later. And there are a fair number of “food deserts” where fresh produce isn’t available so people get used to eating unhealthy foods.
Also, a lot of fruits and vegetables are bred to look good on supermarket shelves rather than taste good (the red delicious apple is a prime example because while certainly red it was anything but delicious). A large strawberry may look appealing, but usually smaller ones have more taste.
Latest Answers