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.

As my mother - an expert in this field - was wont to say, "There's no such thing as junk food, dear - only junk diet."

It really does, and it's why I'm currently trying to lose a few pounds. The temptation is very hard to resist.

I am sitting here with a sad but very healthy dinner of salad, crackers and dip but I'm longing for a pizza. I have a small amount of cheese as a concession (having a bit of cheese is the only thing stopping me making a cheese toastie). It's not the same.

Porridge instead of a croissant for breakfast is also very disappointing.

Alas. <eats another carrot stick>

You're right that high-fat foods taste good, but high-fat foods aren't all junk.

Well a curry full of coconut cream or ghee is fatty and junk you don't need it. It just doesn't taste the same as the healthier substitutes.

No. Lots of 'healthy substitutes' are full of artificial crap. It's better to eat proper, natural, full-fat versions of things but less quantity. Fat isn't inherently bad for you. Highly processed food is junk.

As someone who lost 6 stone, I can hand on heart say that healthy food for weightloss can still taste great. There is also nothing wrong with proper full fat coonut curry etc.
People also need to stop conflating healthy and weightloss. Healthy food can actually be quite calorific.

These threads often show pretty unhealthy relationships with food.
Homemade curry is a junk. Sure

Junk food definitely tastes better. However, whenever I've tried to just eat a small amount, it takes 2 minutes to eat and I never feel satisfied. When I cook myself it takes 20 minutes to eat and I feel really full. What it comes down to, is how I want to feel about myself.

A few days before I came down with covid I had an intense yearning for orange juice. Paid for the fancy freshly squeezed machine stuff in Sainsbury’s. It was literally the strongest craving I've ever had! It's funny how I never crave junk food in these situations. Drunk or bored seems to be my junk food trigger.

I absolutely love junk food so you're not wrong.

I think it's education related. If you look at kids meals, it's all nuggets, sausages and burgers. We're brainwashing them from a young age with thinking these are the tastiest options when there's so much more to food than this beige stuff!

One of my favourite go to meals is a bowl of chickpeas with cherry tomatoes or sun dried tomatoes, a drizzle of olive oil, plenty of humus, olives and some lemon juice, salt and pepper on top! And scattered feta too, why not?
Burgers and fatty rich meals make me feel bloated and not that well.
However, I won't ever say no to chocolate, but proper chocolate.

Absolutely. Henry “founder of Leon” Dimbleby’s new book Ravenous explains just how much megafood corps have manipulated our tastebuds over the past 50 years, with the result that we crave their products like crack (I don’t think this is an exaggeration when you consider how much damage these foods have done to our bodies and the environment). They’ve even perfected the fat:sugar ratio so it matches human breast milk!

I’ve always been interested in food politics (a wanky term I know!) and eaten what I considered to be a pretty good diet — vegetarian for a long time, occasional fish/game, cook from scratch a lot — but, especially since I cut back on booze, I was a sucker for ice cream and chocolate in the evening and quick meals of toast/oven chips etc. Being of a certain age and suddenly feeling exhausted and unfit (despite less booze and a very active job), I decided 6 weeks ago to cut out pretty much all processed crap. Well bugger me, what a difference it has made already! I have more energy, my skin is better, and I’m actually enjoying food more because I’m making new recipes and trying new ingredients rather than sticking to my failsafe day-in-day-out boring diet.

And, although I didn’t do it to lose weight, I’ve lost 4lb despite eating loads of eggs, oils, full fat dairy, butter, cheese, nuts, fruit etc. If I want something sweet, I have dates with dark chocolate and the sugar rush is fantastic 😂 I didn’t even notice it when I was snaffling Magnums every day but now it’s a real pleasure.

Anyway, that was a very long-winded way of saying I agree; open your eyes to Big Food and what you see is shocking.

For me it's not the taste. I don't dislike the taste but the feel of any food that is oily, particularly if you can feel the grease on your lips is gross. I'd rather eat plain lettuce than kfc, purely due to the feel of the oil. It's not only junk food though, even a salad dressed heavily with olive oil I'd dislike.

On balance I think YABU. I can see the appeal in junk food but not as a regular thing. It just tastes and feels "dirty" (not literally) but ykwim.

I'm not a slave to "healthy" food whatever that means, but a few days without fresh salad, fruit and vegetables has me craving it.

I would rather eat a marmite sandwich than a McDonalds burger 19 times out of 20.

So - I think you can get addicted to junk food and think it tastes better just due to over-exposure to it.

Am I the only one who thinks healthy food tastes much nicer? I'm not talking about boring salads or diet food. I mean good, nutritious home cooked food. I certainly don't mean low fat - just food that has lots of vegetables and nutrients. I make delicious home made curries, pasta dishes, fish dishes, Thai dishes etc that are so tasty. Taste so much better than a big mac!

If I had raspberries, strawberries, grapes and apple all chopped up in a bowl I’d be in heaven… some days. Other days I feel like chocolate and crisps. I don’t think one is nicer than the other but I do think some people need to be reminded of how good healthy food can be- we once got a fruit hamper instead of a takeaway, but didn’t tell the kids the takeaway had been on offer- if we had they would no way have been so excited over the berries, grapes and pineapple!!!

This is why I love low-carbing. I still get to have butter, cheese, cream, rich sauces, meat, oily dressing on my salads...I just don't have them with carbs.

I very rarely eat junk food, though, and didn't even before I low-carbed and was a bit overweight. I've never really liked it, it just tastes bland and salty. A takeaway curry is the closest I get.

@LMBoston It is good that you are feeling the benefits of cutting out the processed food you previously ate. I know it sounds simple, and maybe a bit preachy, but the saying you are what you eat, really is no lie. I cook most of my food from scratch, and buy organic when I can. The only takeaway I enjoy is fish and chips, once in a while. I do the best that I can food wise because I only have one body. Yes, food cooking for me can be a chore sometimes, but even a simple meal of steamed fish, steamed potatoes, and peas is preferable to me, rather than having a ready meal, or some other fast food. I will check out that book that you mentioned as well. It sounds interesting.

I love a burger (although I prefer 5 guys to Mcdonalds) but we probably go maybe 4 or 5 times a year. We had our first takeaway of the year last week, so everything in moderation. I wouldn't want to eat it every day, or even every week.
I went on holiday to France about 20 years ago and for sone reason there were barely any vegetables served all week. (It was a catered holiday with very few menu choices) As soon as I got home I wanted to have a stir fry or something with lots of vegetables.....but I've never had a massive vegetable craving since then!Although obviously I do eat vegetables.

In the 1990s my mum went on a diet (she went on loads of diets throughout the 80s and 90s) and read some tip that instead of serving cauliflower cheese, you could serve cauliflower with tinned tomatoes on top. It might have had a sprinkling of breadcrumbs as well. It was awful. I can almost taste the sadness and disappointment, just thinking about it!😂

Rather than McDonalds I prefer the taste of a home made burger made from organic lean beef or lamb and fresh herbs in a bakery bun, with a slice of non-ultra processed cheddar cheese, home made relish, piles of organic green leaves, onion rings, kimchi. Mmmmm! And reasonably healthy.

But taste preferences are partly driven by what we are raised on and what comforts us. I grew up in a place without fast food chains, so as an adult I don’t crave McDonald’s burgers. I find them too soft, too bland, like nursery food. But I don’t blame others who do.

Most people probably would prefer the taste of that, but taking into time and cost it's not really an overly accurate comparison. If money or time wasn't an issue there are probably plenty of things people were prefer the taste of that were inherently healthier.

That's not junk though. Higher calorie but real food still.

I don't agree and would happily never eat junk food again in my life.

I was responding to the original poster’s question, that in my opinion, a burger made with good quality ingredients tastes better than a McDonalds one.

Time and cost is irrelevant to that question, but since you bring it up, a home made burger to that spec is still a bit cheaper than a Big Mac. What the fast food delivers (IMO) is the convenience of not having to cook.

In the nicest possible way, it really sounds like you can’t cook. Everyone uses chicken thighs over breasts to make curry. I’ve never even heard of making curry with breasts. This isn’t a “you” thing. And needing to dump extra cream/ ghee just sounds like you aren’t building flavour correctly.

Can you try a cooking class? It might be worth really investing in a few cooking classes to get the basics of curry right.

This. I had to throw cheap synthetic 'cake' in the bin at work, it just didn't taste like food to me. Others were eating it and seconds. I happily eat cake my nan makes.

Agree with others that you are mixing up higher calorie foods with junk foods. Junk is UPFs, much of it marketed as the 'healthy' option like low fat sugary yogurt. Good high calorie foods are also high satiety, you are full for hours later. Junk leaves you hungry and wanting more as your body is craving nutrients.

It depends. I went to Thailand on my second honeymoon and I wad surprised how tasty and healthy was the food there.