Why You Shouldn’t Feel Bad About Hating Vegetables
Have you ever wondered about the paradox of food that is good for us tasting bad, and food that is bad for us tasting good? In this post, I aim to show that the healthfulness of bad-tasting foods is greatly exaggerated, and the best-tasting foods, specifically those that are unrefined, are actually the most nutritious.
What purpose does taste solve and how does it dictate eating habits? Mark Schatzker seasons his audience with research about food and flavor in his book The Dorito Effect. It turns out animals (including humans) have an inherent “nutritional wisdom” that allows them to thrive without needing to consult nutrition professionals or government bodies. One example from the book is a classic study conducted by pediatrician Dr. Clara Davis, in which infants were weaned off of breastfeeding not by administering them foods chosen by adults, but by allowing them to select their own foods from an array of nutritious whole foods. They managed to pick different foods at different times based on the nutritional needs of their bodies, and did a better job than any professional ever could have. Definitely read the linked study if you want your mind blown. To summarize, a fellow pediatrician of the time, Dr. Joseph Brennemann, published his view of the results in the Journal of Pediatrics:
“I saw them on a number of occasions and they were the finest group of specimens from the physical and behaviour standpoint that I have even seen in children of that age.”
Clearly, infants given a variety of whole foods to choose from can instinctively achieve optimal nutrition based on what tastes best and is most satisfying to them at a given time. So if an infant has no desire to eat a particular food, turning the spoon into a choo-choo train is probably not the best solution. Every animal species has the same nutritional wisdom, which is how every species ends up eating what they do. Schatzker presents an abundance of research about how humans and other animals are able to subconsciously tie flavors to the nutrient content of food. As one might expect, foods engineered by humans might throw this intuitive sense off balance with fake flavors and extracts of refined sugars, refined fats, and refined flour. Unfortunately, a follow-up study including refined foods was never done, but the study does give credence to the idea of having an abundance of whole food options to choose from, and simply eating whatever our hearts desire among those options without regard for arbitrary cultural norms about balance and serving sizes.
What’s interesting is that health seekers usually do the exact opposite: while they might exclude or restrict refined foods, they’ll likely also exclude or restrict delicious real foods. Many delicious real food options exist that have been treasured by humans since the beginning of time: meat, eggs, fruits, fish, milk, honey, among others. A wrong turn in the past 75 years has swayed people to fear and limit some of these foods unnecessarily, so truly enjoying them is a challenge because of these fears. But what if people simply trusted their bodies to intuitively determine the varieties and quantities of these foods?
The flip side of this same argument is another property of conventional “healthy” eating: including an abundance of foods that don’t taste very good. Why is eating leafy greens considered a healthy habit if they taste so terrible? Try eating a salad without dressing; it’s not easy. The answer is firstly, humans don’t have the same physiology as other leaf-eating animals. Gorillas, our close relatives, have huge guts that ferment leaves they eat to help them extract nutrients. Most leaves in the wild are toxic and inedible to humans, but smart people have bred a few to be edible. Nonetheless, human digestive systems are terrible at extracting nutrients from them. For example, when comparing heme iron in red meat to non-heme iron found in spinach, humans absorb approximately 25-30% of heme iron, and only a paltry 1-10% of non-heme iron. Furthermore, a cup of spinach, which is a typical serving size, doesn’t include a large quantity of nutrients in the first place, independent of how well they are absorbed. The reason foods like this are considered nutritious is the flawed concept of “nutrient density,” which is nutritional content relative to calories of a food. From a nutrient density perspective, because greens contain almost zero calories, they look deceptively nutritious. Sure, people can ignore their bad taste and force down large quantities because they’re so low in calories, but they might accidentally destroy their kidneys.
On the other hand, some people avoid bitter plants entirely, to the point where they won’t even season their foods with herbs and spices for fear of introducing plant toxins into their bodies. But Schatzker points out something very interesting: animals in the wild also nibble on toxic plants for flavor. Isn’t it fascinating that small amounts of a plant sprinkled on a food can enhance flavor, while eating a larger amount tastes disgusting? The dose makes the poison, and this phenomenon gives additional credibility to the idea that our bodies are smarter than we think when it comes to taste. Though eating black pepper like a bowl of cereal might taste horrible and induce toxicity, a small amount can be beneficial via hormesis: the idea that a small amount of a toxin can create beneficial biochemical adaptations in the body. Our bodies are smart enough to communicate the difference via taste.
Understanding the true meaning of good nutritional health arguably makes a healthy lifestyle much easier than that of a typical person, who is constantly worried about eating this or that, or how much is too much. Living in a world of abundance is always preferable to living in one of restriction, but the restriction lifestyle is celebrated to keep people in a purgatory of nutritional shame, fear, and desperation. Instead, realizing what real food is and is not, and learning how to listen to our body’s signals, is the answer to removing all of that worry and becoming free.
The point is not to attack spinach eaters, but to demonstrate that if something doesn’t taste good, there’s no reason to eat it, and doing so can be harmful in some cases. For those who do enjoy spinach, they should eat it. But they’re probably aliens.