Why is the best tasting food often not good for you?

[pioneer]

Some of the best tasting food is often classified as not good for you. For example, a steak with a lot of fat marbling is often better tasting, but will be higher in fat, which is not considered good for you. Children love high sugar, such as in candy and ice cream, etc. Sugar free is an acquired taste which may not be chosen if there was the sugar option and not guilt or fear trip.

 

Does better tasting food have a genetic parallel that has evolved. Does the best taste define what is premium for the body like an instinct. Maybe in the natural environment, where one is more active and meals are more hit and miss, these foods offer the body the most since it has a pleasure premium.

 

As an analogy, a Panda Bear likes Eucalyptus leaves. His taste for this is part of his genetic nature, since this was the chosen food or the food that has evolved with him. We can scientifically make a food package that would sustain him and may even have more nutritional value. But he will still prefer to eat his chosen food. The question I have is, do the best tasting foods have a genetic connection. I am not saying it is better for you than artificial things, which don't always have a premium taste. The fake potato chips in fake oil just don't have the flavor. We almost have to use guilt or fear to force feed this since this would not be the natural choice.

 

There was a dog food study. Dogs prefer nasty smelling food. Dog food is made for the human sense of smell so people will buy it. Our sense of smell prefers fresher smells. We buy what we like for the dog. He is has to eat something and will learn to eat that. But give him a nasty choice and he might use his natural instinct. Science does this with humans. We prefer the good tasting stuff, but it tries to feed up what it thinks is good. But if we had a choice, no guilt or fear, why would people sort of default back to the better tasting.

Edited December 28, 2008 by pioneer

[ydoaPs]

Generally: high caloric density => good taste

 

Evolutionary mechanism from before agriculture.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think you meant koalas instead of pandas.

[SkepticLance]

The two main 'bad for you' foods are those high in fat, high in salt, and those high in sugar. We have developed a taste for these, because all three are excellent in small quantities. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors could never get enough, and they evolved the desire to always eat more, which led to their improved health and reproductive success, as drives evolution.

 

The problem is that modern civilisation, based on modern agriculture, can supply all the fatty, salty and sweet foods we might crave. Thus, we eat more of those foods, and our health suffers. Evolution gave us the desire for those foods, but did not need to evolve a maximum limit, since our primitive forebears rarely could get to that point, the foods being scarce. With no upper limit to our craving we eat too much of these foods, and our health suffers.

[Mr Skeptic]

And adaptation from the time that food was scarce -- people valued calories so that they wouldn't starve. The sweet tooth may be an adaptation for eating ripe fruit. As for salt, our bodies need salt to function, but in some societies salt was very scarce. Excess salt can easily be excreted, but we can't make salt so we have to eat it.

[snezanaulbrich]

The best tasting food usually contains alot of sugar, and thats why it is not good for you. Sugar is very addictive and can rot the teeth and make you fat, it is good to stick to foods with low sugar and indulge in some high sugar foods only once in a while.

[D H]

The problem is that modern civilisation, based on modern agriculture, can supply all the fatty, salty and sweet foods we might crave.

Modern civilization / modern agriculture is the key. Until 100 years ago, only a tiny, tiny portion of the population had the opportunity to indulge in eating to the extent the vast majority of the population of any advanced country can indulge today. Obesity has only become a significant problem in the last 50 years or so: two or three generations. Evolution isn't fast enough to compensate for this sudden switch from feast/famine to perpetual feast. The pounds gained from those feasts at the end of harvest time helped us stay alive during winter. We still have the genes that tell us that a wonderfully marbled steak, a baked potato with all the fixins, buttered green beans, and a slice of pie for dessert not only tastes good but is good. Our genes have not yet been modernized to tell us that that meal is not as good as we think it is.

[falcon9393]

I would say anything sugar based such as candy maple syrup you get the point and believe it or not BEEF!!! yes beef, you see the corn industry has been booming in the past decade and corn is now mostly turned into ethonal, corn syrup for your sugary based product *cough piggys cough* and into corn mill for animal feed, you basically are eating corn beef=corn!

so if i was to answer this complicated question in simple terms i would simply say, "C-O-R-N"!!!!

last year our school embarked out to watch the feature film king corn which explains the total godlyness of corn itself, i recommend that movie its just as good as super size me but with more corn! so enjoy your corn because its about all you eat now a days

 

 

[Kyrisch]

Completely off-topic, but this thread came back due to a bit of necromancy anyway... A meta-question!

 

Why is the view-to-post ratio so inflated for this thread? I understood the "Sex is Fun" phenomenon, by why this one?

[Sisyphus]

Completely off-topic, but this thread came back due to a bit of necromancy anyway... A meta-question!

 

Why is the view-to-post ratio so inflated for this thread? I understood the "Sex is Fun" phenomenon, by why this one?

 

Presumably it's something that people are often searching for? I tried a few plausible variations on Google, but I couldn't get this thread on the first page.

[Carvone]

Food flavour is generally made up of taste (chemical effect), aroma (chemical effect), texture while chewing (physical effect), and appearance (psychological effect as it contributes to your expectations of how the food will taste).

 

I believe most people above have already hit the nail on the head saying that we crave high caloric content and in general things with high sugar (universal sweetness), fat (high calories per gram, a flavour/aroma carrier and adds creamy texture), and salt (a flavour enhancer promoting volatility of flavour compounds and potentiating taste receptors to have greater sensitivity although there are no calories from salt being a mineral!). All flavour comes from small molecules (aromas, sugars, fats, salts, peptides) as large molecules (proteins, starches, gums and other polysaccharides) will be bland due to being non-volatile and too large to attach to taste receptors, but do contribute to food texture in pastiness (water-binding by starch) or gelation (water-trapping by gums).

 

The threory with fruit is that they do not want to be eaten when not ripe so are sour and bland in flavour. When ripe, enzymes have broken down polysaccharides and glycosides into sugars and flavour compunds making them sweeter, more flavourful and moist (due to hydrolysis) and hence softer in texture. Ripeness is when the fruit has matured to where it is most reproductive, and it now it wants to be eaten by animals so the seeds can be carried to different areas before being passed through into feces.

 

Bitterness on the other hand is almost universally disliked and in fact it has the lowest sensory threshold of all five taste groups. This is because most poisons and toxins are usually bitter (eg. alkaloids), and generally bitterness is detected at the back of the tongue to cause gag reflex to bring up any toxins, while sweetness is detected at first at tip of tongue (more sweet taste receptors there) Some bitter compounds such as caffeine in coffee/tea, and hops extracts in beer can have an acquired taste with some people but are in dilute amounts and are generally masked by other ingredients.

 

In most cases, it is said that nutrition will be promoted by a balanced diet meaning consumption of a variety of foods (fruits and vegetables with healthful phytochemicals and antioxdants), high in vitamins and certain minerals, with moderation to calorie-dense foods with little else. Cola is not unhealthy for you in the sense that it does not have anything harmful to your body (OK high sugar and phosphoric acid can help rot teeth), but really it supplants the consumption of healthier drinks such as natural juice and milk.

[Critical Mind]

I'd say meat. It can be quite appetizing, but it's far from healthy. Recent evidence shows that meat consumption has been linked to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and many other degenerative diseases. Aside from the well-known, it's practically common sense that meat was never intended to be consumed by human beings. Just take a look at the structure of our teeth and you'll see what I mean. Human teeth are rounded, and/or quadratically shaped. Almost every creature in nature who has rounded teeth consume vegetation and have a non-flesh appetite. This is nature's indication that we (humans) are natural plant eaters. Only creatures with sharp, pointy, blaze-like teeth consume animal flesh; e.g. lions, hyenas, bears, wolves and other wild beasts. Horses, Elephants, deers and many herbivores have teeth similar to ours, and their lifespan is relatively long.

[ydoaPs]

I'd say meat. It can be quite appetizing, but it's far from healthy. Recent evidence shows that meat consumption has been linked to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and many other degenerative diseases. Aside from the well-known, it's practically common sense that meat was never intended to be consumed by human beings. Just take a look at the structure of our teeth and you'll see what I mean. Human teeth are rounded, and/or quadratically shaped. Almost every creature in nature who has rounded teeth consume vegetation and have a non-flesh appetite. This is nature's indication that we (humans) are natural plant eaters. Only creatures with sharp, pointy, blaze-like teeth consume animal flesh; e.g. lions, hyenas, bears, wolves and other wild beasts. Horses, Elephants, deers and many herbivores have teeth similar to ours, and their lifespan is relatively long.

Have you seen human teeth? They're the teeth of omnivores. Nice try, though.

[Critical Mind]

Have you seen human teeth? They're the teeth of omnivores. Nice try, though.

Regardless of whether we have the propensity to process meat with our teeth, that doesn't mean we should, or do it very well. There are other things to consider besides teeth when categorizing predation. Could you catch a wild rodent and bite its head off? No. Our jaws don't have that measure of power, and it goes against our anatomical structure. The animals I mentioned (lions, wolves, tigers, dogs) all have claws and sharp front teeth that enables them to tackle and rip through flesh. They also have a digestive tract that can efficiently digest meat within hours. Whereas in humans, it takes about 36 hours on average to digest meat - that's not natural. Let us not forget that humans can't digest raw meat, which is sufficient indication that we are not omnivores by nature. And as I mentioned before, if meat-consumption were truly natural, a plethora of deadly diseases wouldn't result from eating it. Yet we still eat it, because we've been conditioned too. And we enjoy its odor and chewy texture, slowly killing ourselves over a little taste.

 

Read this link if you wanna know more:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/09/are-humans-carnivores-or-herbivores-2/

Edited August 22, 2009 by Critical Mind

[Mr Skeptic]

Well if you think meat is bad for us, you should see the effects of not eating meat without being very careful to eat the proper substitutes. For example, some vegetarian monks discovered that they can boost the protein percentage of flour by washing it with cold water to remove starch. Now tell me, how natural is it to remove the most high-energy portion of your meal?

[GDG]

Regardless of whether we have the propensity to process meat with our teeth, that doesn't mean we should, or do it very well. There are other things to consider besides teeth when categorizing predation. Could you catch a wild rodent and bite its head off? No. Our jaws don't have that measure of power, and it goes against our anatomical structure. The animals I mentioned (lions, wolves, tigers, dogs) all have claws and sharp front teeth that enables them to tackle and rip through flesh. They also have a digestive tract that can efficiently digest meat within hours. Whereas in humans, it takes about 36 hours on average to digest meat - that's not natural. Let us not forget that humans can't digest raw meat, which is sufficient indication that we are not omnivores by nature. And as I mentioned before, if meat-consumption were truly natural, a plethora of deadly diseases wouldn't result from eating it. Yet we still eat it, because we've been conditioned too. And we enjoy its odor and chewy texture, slowly killing ourselves over a little taste.

 

Sorry, I can't agree with anything you've presented as fact.

• Can I (personally) catch a wild rodent? Maybe -- I haven't had occasion to try. But many, many people have survived by catching and eating rodents such as rabbits and squirrels. So, I'd have to say that humans are capable of catching wild rodents.
  
• Could I bite the head off a wild rodent? Probably. Even the human jaw can develop quite a lot of biting force. If I had to do it periodically, I'm sure I would develop the necessary jaw muscles. And I think that there is at least one notable example of a rock singer biting the head off a bat...
  
• Sharp front teeth: yes, we do have sharp front teeth. They aren't shaped like those of obligate carnivores because we are omnivores, and our teeth are adapted for more than just ripping flesh. Our teeth are also substantially different from those of herbivores. Would you argue that we shouldn't eat vegetables or grains because we don't have teeth like cattle and sheep?
  
• I don't see that the length of time meat resides in the GI tract means anything at all. Perhaps we just spend more time in order to obtain a more efficient extraction of nutrients. "That's not natural" is not a scientific argument, and (if 36 hours is true) it obviously is natural: we obviously have not deliberately extended that time.
  
• Can't digest raw meat? You apparently have never had a rare steak, steak tartare, or carpacchio. People eat raw meat every day, and, yes, digest it.
  
• Deadly diseases: We in the developed world possibly eat too much meat, but disorders caused by overconsumption do not indicate that all consumption is bad. Drinking too much water can be deadly too, and much more rapidly.