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.

Worth consider you fall into a category where food was your addiction.

For example, I love a glass of red wine, that lovely, warm comfy feeling, all settled in for the night with a warming glass infront if the telly or reading a good book. But I've barely drank since my children were born 5 years ago because I love it, it's a nice thing but going without it because I sleep better and manage life better without a tipple is easy for me.

I have a mild binge eating problem, if I eat a family size bag of crisps I feel as shit as I do after a glass of wine the night before so you'd think it's be easy not to have those too but it isn't.

Someone who says oh wouldn't you rather have a big meal for all those calories, I mean rationally yes, of cours I would but that's not how this shit works. Avoiding Junk food is a huge battle for me avoiding alcohol isn't.

For an alcoholic avoiding alcohol is a huge battle I don't have to face.

Lettuce either tastes nasty, or of absolutely nothing.

Crisps or chocolate make you feel good, so can’t be that bad.

So called healthy food’s the real rubbish, that’s why they keep trying to tell us how much better it is for us. They want the real good stuff, like red meat for themselves.

I don't agree. You can have a really delicious healthy meal, but it takes effort to make it. Although nothing beats chocolate 😀

I also don't agree. I really like salad leaves and eat salad most days! Crisps I can take or leave and mostly leave.

By default yes, it's salty.

But if you put effort in you could make healthy food that tasted amazing. I've done it, not that I can be bothered all the time, but it certainly is possible.

I don't agree I could add all the seasoning and combinations in the world to a low fat lean meal but it still wouldn't taste as good as a meal with higher fat. I can cook lots of things high fat is divine to me.

I agree with you OP. Give me a mcd's / family sized bag of crisps / cream cake and I'm a happy girl.

Fine to have every now and then. This site is full of competitive under eating.

I think I’m going to start a separate thread in which to collect clips of people staggering, shocked, to the open window to get some air, gasping ‘everyone does x - i’ve never even heard of anyone doing y’….

This one’s going straight in.

Everyone uses chicken thighs over breasts to make curry. I’ve never even heard of making curry with breasts.

I shall be nippong down The Red Fort later, to ask them what they’re doing with all their thighless chickens.

Sorry but I think it's because you're not a very good cook. When done right healthy meals taste soooo good.

Depends what you call healthy I suppose.

Fatty food, cream, cheese, meat with fat, fatty fish...they aren't intrinsically unhealthy. But - complete obvious point - needs to be part of a balanced diet if you aren't burning off all the calories.

Most moreish foods apparently have roughly the same carb-fat-protein ratio as breast milk.

www.donteatforwinter.com/breast-milk-vs-junk-food/

Fats don't equal unhealthy though.

So you're looking at it all wrong.

I absolutely adore junk food and have made it my mission to create tasty food that won't put me in an early grave or give me a chronic illness.

Avocadoes are great for healthy fats, as are nuts.

You have to want to do it I think is key.

Wow, so interesting!

Sorry but you're confusing high fat with unhealthy. Often high fat foods are healthy. I eat a lot of fats. I drizzle most of my meals with extra virgin olive oil. Yes olive oil is high calorie but it's certainly not unhealthy. It's one of the healthiest things you can eat, full of anti-oxidants and has anti-cancer properties. Likewise I go for whole milk over semi-skimmed because it's healthier. Yes it has more fat but I've read it's more nutritious. I've read studies on the positive health benefits of whole milk compared to cow's milk.
I often add a handful of nuts to meals. It seems you'd see this as unhealthy because they're calorific. But nuts aren't unhealthy. They're extremely good for you.
In my mind, unhealthy food is food which lacks nutrients and doesn't have a positive effect on the body - haribos, fizzy drinks etc. These foods don't taste good to me anyway.

To a point. I tend to crave variety. After Christmas and eating lots of rich food, I find myself wanting light things such as salad. When I'm trying to eat healthily in the long term, I find myself craving junk food but if I give in and have it, I soon get fed up of it. Junk food is more-ish while it's being eaten and tempts you to overeat, but can get get monotonous like anything else if you start having it too often.

OP seems to have some disordered eating ideas but seems very stubborn about it. Fat isn’t bad. High fat foods aren’t bad. Chicken thighs are healthy. There’s something very disingenuous and silly about pretending that chicken thighs are “junk food”.

Also by curries I assume she means Thai green curry or something very basic like that because adding “extra” cream/ ghee to most indian curries just sounds disgusting.

It is odd that they keep interchanging fat and junk when numerous people have explained that's not what junk is. It does sound very disordered.

I completely disagree but I don't think food with a decent fat content is junk food, far from it, as long as it's healthy fat and not horrible cheap seed oils.

Well a curry full of coconut cream or ghee is fatty and junk you don't need it

No, these are healthy fats and you do need fat in your diet, you'd die without it and you need it to absorb nutrients.

What is junk is ultra-processed foods, sugars, refined carbs and seed oils.

I totally agree and I think it’s catching on but it’s a slow process. I will never ever have seed oil in my house again. Though it is ubiquitous in the restaurant industry so difficult to avoid, sadly.

@W0tnow same in terms of what I have in the house. I think unfortunately that any sort of eating out, processed or convenience food will most likely contain it, or almost all. Hopefully that's okay if you mostly eat at home but some people consume it day in and day out.

Of course high fat/sugar food tastes good to us, our desire to eat it is what has kept us going over a million years - evolution hasn't caught up with our current food environment.

I'm not sure why people are so keen to deny this simple fact. Threads on here go for pages and pages about how if only people could be educated, have more money, learn to cook, not see advertising, if only they had the right parents or the right set of knives, then all obesity problems would be solved. These have an effect yes but the bottom line is these foods are delicious. Thats why people want to eat them.

FrozenGhost yep literally what is meant by living in an obesogenic diet. We're surrounded by all the foods we're hard-wired to prefer as they have the highest energy content, whereas we're no different genetically from our ancestors who would largely have lived with food scarcity.

@FrozenGhost

Of course high fat/sugar food tastes good to us, our desire to eat it is what has kept us going over a million years - evolution hasn't caught up with our current food environment.

There's an argument to say that evolution never will catch up with it. Evolution only cares about reproduction, and the harm done by eating a lot of high fat and sugar tends not to be fatal until well after breeding age.

One could say that if we all stopped breeding with people who overdo the Mr Kipling's, then we might select out the genes that push people towards that. But we'd have to do it for hundreds of generations - and we change our idea of 'breedingly attractive' constantly, and from culture to culture.

Though obviously those of us who use chicken breasts to make curry are doomed.

I like both, to be fair. I love fatty salty stodgy foods but I also love crispbreads and home made salsa/guac and salads with seeds, oil dressings and olives.