To think junk food tastes so much better than healthy food?

[Fifi1010]

Keep reading about all the debates about food , obesity etc. I used to be obese I had weight loss surgery a few years ago now my BMI is 21 from 41. I've lost half my body weight it's no issue staying slim as I physically cannot eat much even crappy foods . I eat a relatively healthy diet now because I need too or I will be malnourished.
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I will say though in my obesity journey is it doesn't matter how much I educated myself about food , cooked healthy meals the allure of fatty burgers and junk was so tempting. I loved fatty food it tastes better. Even gourmet eating out I prefer rich sauces with fat.

I generally believe even with education , extra taxes some people will choose to eat shit food because it tastes so much nicer than 99 percent of healthy food.

Agree with this.
Fat does not equal junk - if you had the extra coconut milk/ghee in curries but it was also rich in veg and were not snacking on UPF between meals, you’re much less likely to be overweight.
UPF is junk food - the addictive combination of fat and sugar is to blame

Homemade Thai green curry with coconut cream isn't junk food though. Are you confusing foods with a higher fat content with junk food? Junk food means things with little or no nutritional value, like McDonalds or KFC.

I agree mostly.

Saying that, I recall I without realising it at one stage had essentially eliminated processed sugars and at a family event I got a pepsi max and couldnt drink it as it was too sugary. If you are so inclined to eat lots of fresh unprocessed food, it probably does taste too sugary/salty etc.

I disagree. I wasn’t really given junk food as a child. I also have a revulsion towards oil and fat. So anything fried is out, a lot of cakes/sweet etc are far too sweet for me and make me feel sick. My kids also tend to eat food that is healthier as well (without me telling them)

I disagree that its little/no nutritional value.

Perhaps processed is a better word to use?

But high calorie food makes us fat, unless you have a small appetite, or a physical job. I eat well, but as a post menopause 5"2' woman, the portions that stope being hungry would make me overweight.

I think there's definitely a genetic component I wasn't allowed to eat junk at home , but as soon as I was old enough I'd buy crisps , chips and gravy 🤣🤣. It was like crack addiction. I do like veg , I don't have a sweet tooth at all it's fatty stuff for me. I couldn't eat a plain grilled chicken salad with vingerette dressing it would have to have avocado and/or a fatty dressing.

I think it’s easier to make nice tasting food that isn’t good for you than healthy food. Healthy food that’s nice tasting seems to involve more care/greater number of ingredients, where you can just shove melted cheese onto something and to me it tastes great.

It's the portion size of the curry I'd use to eat I'd eat two full sized big bowls easily. Now I can only eat a saucer size of food per sitting . So I still eat the full fat curry but the portion size is so much lower so I don't gain any weight. I have to make an effort not to lose weight now.

I think you are confusing junk food with high fat food. Most junk food will be high fat, but not all high fat food will be junk food. In the example you gave, I don’t think a thai curry is junk food.
I don’t like deep fried food so don’t like most junk food. I don’t like burgers, KFC, deep pan pizzas etc. I would eat a takeaway curry and enjoy it, but wouldn’t class it as junk (although it is high calorie and I wouldn’t eat it too often). I would enjoying eating a tomato, avocado and burrata salad, which is high fat and high calorie, but also contains goodness (and is definitely not junk).

KFC is chicken. McDonald's can be a variety of foods. Different cultures have their own health issues and rice/yams/pasta isn't necessarily any healthier than Macdonald's. Asia, Africa and India have deep fried dishes, but made from scratch.

There’s only a handful of junk food that taste decent to me otherwise healthy food is way better.

Only 2-3 kinds of crisps I like here and the rest are way too salty that I struggle to finish even a small bag so DH eats it even though he has said the quality of crisps have really gone down for him. I prefer the super spicy ones (well as spicy as you can get in the UK which isn’t much at all)

Store-bought cakes, biscuits are also ridiculously sweet that I just make them from scratch, cutting out half the sugar. Why does a cake need a lot of sugar if it is going to have icing and other things sprinkled on it (chocolate, sweets, sprinkles)?

Majority of ready-meals aren’t worth the calories, saturated fats and sugars that are in them when they still taste bland and/or not even satisfying , and there are tastier, healthier ways of making them.

This salad is delicious, topped with chicken, fish it’s so good

I think your body can be trained out of enjoying it. I used to have takeaway pizzas and really enjoy them. Had one the other day after a couple of years and it tasted so salty and greasy and I had to drink so much water over night.

@kezzieliza. I struggle to eat some pizza, it gives me terrible heart burn & I thought it was coincidence until I repeated the same meal a few weeks later. It was Birtelli which I’d thought would be ok

Looks ok if a cheeseburger had the same nutritional content I'd rather eat the cheeseburger 🤣🤣🤣

I can't eat pizza anyway too doughy sets my heart burn off.

well the human palette is designed to enjoy sweet, fatty and salty food. So it's no surprise that things that contain those things taste better. On tope of that junk food is laced with chemicals that are addictive.

I don't agree. I feel really yuk if I've had a day of bad eating. Makes me thirsty, low energy. I fancy a bowl of chips with loads of salt now and then but it isn't nicer than the amazing salads I eat every day.

I think sometimes the idea of junk food is nicer than the reality.... Like a maxdonalds breakfast or a Greggs... They feel like a treat but actually are always really disappointing.

Oh yes I love pakoras , fried roti One of my favourite dishes in Singapore is hokkien mee which is noodles in a marinated lard broth with seafood with lime and sambal on the side🤣🤣. Very fresh ingredients but not exactly healthy.

But ghee and coconut cream aren’t junk foods. I think it has finally been acknowledged that fat doesn’t cause cardiovascular disease.

I think you're conflating junk and high fat... to me junk food is highly processed and generally tastes like crap. On the other hand full fat milk, double cream, roast lamb and roast potatoes, curries full of coconut milk or ghee... are high in fat and delicious (at least in part because they are high in fat) - but they are not junk. Neither are they anything like as bad for you as junk.

This is also why diets like slimming world are bullshit. You NEED fat! Avocado is fatty and yet every single bollocks weight loss diet always points it fucking higher than a packet of wotsits or calls it a SIN.

No wonder people struggle with disordered eating.

Yes to some extent - something like a take away pizza is amazing (that combination of carbs, cheese and salt) but doesn't leave me feeling good afterwards.

That said my diet isn't great at the moment and it's mostly due to how easy it is to get a sandwich or cook pasta compared to chopping lots of veg, washing up everything etc. And the quality of vegetables in many shops now is shocking. Look at the reviews on Ocado and it doesn't really tempt me to buy a cauliflower for £2.85 or a butternut squash I know will be hard to cut up if everyone in the reviews says it's tasteless or arrives already past its best.

Of course it is! You just have to see the faces of babies when introducing them to new foods. They will give a big huge grin after chocolate, ice-cream or fries, not so much for broccoli puree!

If weight and health wasn't an issue, very few would still opt for healthy choices.