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Ezra Klein argues that industrialized food tastes good. Well, not all of it, certainly, but The Cheesecake Factory? They engineer that stuff to taste good. And ditto for quite a bit of the food consumed in America.
Here's the thing, though: Heroin feels really, really good (so I hear) and yet we don't all do it. Why? Well for those of us who haven't tried it, we understand that the unpleasant effects it will have on us will, in the long run, outweigh the pleasure. People I know who have tried it found out the hard way that it ultimately leads to more pain than pleasure.
I don't deny that much of the stuff I won't eat tastes good. I know it tastes good. I spent the first 24 or so years of my life eating it. Right now, my food does more than just taste good though. I FEEL good. Tonight I had a craving for gelato and I thought about it realized that if I ate it, my stomach would hurt A LOT. So I didn't eat it. When I'm in the habit of eating gelato and other sweets, I've got a much greater tolerance for it before my stomach hurts. You need a few weeks of healthy food - only a few weeks - and then you'll realize that you feel better when you eat well. There's more than just taste to determine our food decisions.
By the way, check out this graph from Ezra Klein. It's the percentage increase in health care costs between 2001 and 2006 for people classified as "Normal" weight, overweight, and obese:
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