eli5: Why is it that unhealthy foods taste so good(chocolate, soda, candy, fried foods etc.) despite it being bad for us while healthier foods (veggies, whole grain etc.) taste much worse in comparison?

Question

Wouldn’t our bodies recognize which foods that are most beneficial and demand to have more of that?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Our brain is still programmed by our ancestors. Their situation being sugar, fat and salty foods (the fastfood holy trinity) were rare in their surrounding.

So that’s why it’s more delicious, it used to be a very desirable and useful thing because that food was more scarce. Now we have developed to have it in abudance, pretty much in excess, in a very short time but our nature still thinks it’s special.

So that’s why it’s so much tastier.