Question: Why do things that are bad for us taste the best?

Petra Cameron answered on 18 Jan 2017:

This is a very good question – although you need a biologist rather than an energy scientist to answer this properly! There is one theroy that says that when food was scarce in hunter gatherer times there was an evolutionary advantage to go for high energy (high fat, high sugar) food to help us survive. Now we have abundant food but we still have the same urge to eat high fat and high sugar foods! However I think there are several theories about why we like things that are bad for us and I am not sure which one has the most evidence to support it at the moment!!