Why do our bodies crave bad foods if it doesn’t benefit us?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Crave. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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6 Responses to “Why do our bodies crave bad foods if it doesn’t benefit us?”

  1. PartyChick Says:
    April 4th, 2009 at 8:33 am

    I think the taste is addicting…kind of like cocaine..it sends a signal to the brain that we like need it…kinda like amazing good tasting (but bad for you) food :)

  2. cartejacob Says:
    April 7th, 2009 at 1:34 am

    comfort foods!

    when you’re a kid, and you scrape your knee your mom doesn’t say, “oh, have an apple or a carrot”
    no she offers you a cookie, or lasagna, or a piece of pie
    So your brain associates those foods with happiness

  3. Ewolfe Says:
    April 10th, 2009 at 8:29 am

    well; those “bad” foods are delicious. I’ll just leave you to figure it all out from here on out

  4. Bigsky_52 Says:
    April 12th, 2009 at 6:31 am

    We’re fighting against evolution, and the fact that we’ve only had enough to eat for a short time. Fatty, greasy, calorie laden foods are what you WANT when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from! You want to get as many calories as possible from everything you eat. That’s why foods that are unhealthy usually taste so good: because our bodies have evolved to equate the taste of calorie rich substances with enjoyment as an incentive to find and eat more of them. This is fine if you’re leading an extrememly active lifestyle focused on survival where food needs to be run down and stabbed with a spear. Not so much if you’re a computer programmer who walks less than a half mile a day. This is just evolutionary biology at work.

  5. Robert R Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    Interestingly enough, it is our blood type which determines what kinds of food we crave. We either crave salty food or sweet food. Of course large food manufacturers have researched this in order to add tastes which our bodies crave. Look at kid’s cereal. Do you think kids like oat bran? They like whatever is sweet and tastes good to them. Ever notice how canned foods or frozen dinners contain so much sodium? People buy what taste good to them. It’s all about marketing. That is why we end up eating “the bad things” when we should enjoy foods that are naturally delicious.

  6. coloradohurricane Says:
    April 17th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Because the history of mankind has been about getting enough food- only in the past 150 years or so has mankind had a problem with getting too much food.

    Go back 10000 years (or more) when we were still hunters/gatherers. We had to hunt for meat, but there were no guns, so we had to use spears. Sometimes there would be days when we wouldn’t kill anything. So we don’t find anything to kill today, but we found some berry bushes. The sugar in the fruit gives us quick energy to sustain us. And so liking fatty and/or sweet foods in a time of scarceness isn’t a liability, it’s an asset. And that’s why there are so many overweight people. Nature has “selected” those who can put on fat easily and don’t have a high metabolism.

    Now fast forward to today. Even homeless people have no trouble getting enough food (there is more food in the average supermarket dumpster than the average person would have 200 years ago). The amount of food available is overwhelming. But those things which our ancestors craved for survival- fatty meats which your body could store to sustain you over the long haul, and sugar which is a good quick energy source are no longer scarce. And the food manufacturers have gone a step beyond nature. Whereas fruit and other carbs (grains) have nutrition, fiber, and pulp to slow down the absorption of the sugar, the food industry has taken those out which jacks your blood sugar way up. They have made food addictive (in much the same way that opium is a little addictive, but its adulterated byproducts- heroin, etc are VERY addictive).

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