Guess what. It's chips and doughnuts.
It's not. That was me joking.
No, Professor Barbur of City University, London, says it's 'leafy greens', and if you want to, you can read the whole thing here on the BBC News website.
It's always leafy greens. It's kale and it's rocket, or it's lettuce and it's cabbage - things that are really hard work to like, but are instinctively good for us. Sometimes it seems like we, as humans, are forced to choose between a long and healthy life of insipid flavour, and a short, fat one, enjoying tasty food while the sun shines. You can have one or the other. Is it delicious? Put it down and eat your greens, fatso. Yeah but they taste like seaweed, can't I just have a chip or a doughnut, just this once?
Not that I'm suggesting I want to live off chips and doughnuts.
Just in case anyone got the wrong message there: I do not want to live off chips and doughnuts.
I think the problem is that a lot of really lip-smackingly delicious food turned out to be moreish, so we ate more of it. Then some clever people worked out that the more moreish a foodstuff is, the more we eat of it and the more we'll pay for it. So they carried on filling those foods with more of the stuff that makes them moreish, and the profits came rolling in.
They processed it, and we all bought it. They made it cheaper and then they made it sweeter. As a result, moreish food became even more moreish and the gap between healthy and delicious got wider and wider. Now the gap is so large that insipid vegetables don't taste of anything, compared to the ultra-intense flavour of something tasty. And we're all hooked on the good stuff.
When I stop and think about it then, it occurs to me that the way I taste food might have been wholly influenced by large companies who have literally conditioned me into buying it from them.
And the sneakiest thing they've done is to stop us from seeing it. Clever advertising, cultural shifts and reprogrammed tastebuds have probably impeded our eyesight.
Better get munching those leafy greens.
It's always leafy greens. It's kale and it's rocket, or it's lettuce and it's cabbage - things that are really hard work to like, but are instinctively good for us. Sometimes it seems like we, as humans, are forced to choose between a long and healthy life of insipid flavour, and a short, fat one, enjoying tasty food while the sun shines. You can have one or the other. Is it delicious? Put it down and eat your greens, fatso. Yeah but they taste like seaweed, can't I just have a chip or a doughnut, just this once?
Not that I'm suggesting I want to live off chips and doughnuts.
Just in case anyone got the wrong message there: I do not want to live off chips and doughnuts.
I think the problem is that a lot of really lip-smackingly delicious food turned out to be moreish, so we ate more of it. Then some clever people worked out that the more moreish a foodstuff is, the more we eat of it and the more we'll pay for it. So they carried on filling those foods with more of the stuff that makes them moreish, and the profits came rolling in.
They processed it, and we all bought it. They made it cheaper and then they made it sweeter. As a result, moreish food became even more moreish and the gap between healthy and delicious got wider and wider. Now the gap is so large that insipid vegetables don't taste of anything, compared to the ultra-intense flavour of something tasty. And we're all hooked on the good stuff.
When I stop and think about it then, it occurs to me that the way I taste food might have been wholly influenced by large companies who have literally conditioned me into buying it from them.
And the sneakiest thing they've done is to stop us from seeing it. Clever advertising, cultural shifts and reprogrammed tastebuds have probably impeded our eyesight.
Better get munching those leafy greens.
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