When you think about healthy eating what comes to your mind?
Most people associate healthy eating with displeasing food.
No matter how many times people talk about healthy food, you will always find them going back to unhealthy food.
What do you go for when hunger strikes? Ask anyone to close their eyes and think about their favorite meals, in most cases, you will find non-healthy
meals taking the lead.
Why is this so?
Unhealthy food is Addictive
Studies conducted using rats found that fatty food had a tendency of creating cocaine-like addictions in the brain.
In this case, the electrodes used for monitoring brain activity indicated high levels of tolerance arising for fat-related foods.
As such, the rats develop a high compulsion to seek these kinds of foods. Essentially, this relates to humans. High ingestion of unhealthy junk food reduces a longing for healthy foods.
This is because unhealthy junk food interferes with taste buds associated with healthy foods.
The Wrong Perception
They say that healthy food does not have a marketing budget. This is quite true. Whether you are online or watching television, the quality of advertisements promoting unhealthy food comes with hype.
This hype creates a view that favors unhealthy food over healthy food.
Over time, people grow to learn that unhealthy foods are better when compared to healthy foods simply because of the way they look.
What does not cool, never sells.
High Concentration of Sugar and Fat
When you compare healthy and unhealthy food, what you will notice is the concentration of sugar and fat.
In fact, these components are widely associated with food-related conditions such as diabetes and obesity.
People tend to develop cravings for foods that are sweeter or tastier. For these reasons, they find healthy food tasting bad compared to unhealthy food.
Ever Changing Lifestyle Behind Our Food-Mood
Our changing lifestyle patterns have also been critical in influencing our preference over certain meals.
For instance, the age-old habit of cooking is seemingly disappearing in favor of having ready prepared meals.
As such, companies in the business of manufacturing foods strive to create demand by competing to prepare tasty foods. In the end, this affects how people view healthy meals.
In addition, changes in our evolutionary adaptations are reprogramming
our brains. One can easily note this by the brain’s preference of foods that
are easy to convert into immediate energy.
Essentially, this was not the case when we had limited access to unhealthy foods. However, with the opening of the market and competition, the number of businesses providing these services strives to create a consistent market.
Wrong Orientation from Childhood
When growing up, children were oriented towards tasty foods as rewards for activities achieved.
For instance, if you finished your homework in time, one could easily get ice cream and not a carrot.
As such, growing up with such an orientation affected how people view natural and healthy foods.
Children who have grown up in environments without such reward systems continue to appreciate the role of healthy food.
In essence, healthy food does not taste bad. Our social and psychological
orientation continues to influence how we view it.
Leave a Reply