A physician friend of mine explained to me once that humans are hardwired to like fat and sugar. Fat has a high number of calories per gram and is necessary for

A physician friend of mine explained to me once that humans are hardwired to like fat and sugar. Fat has a high number of calories per gram and is necessary for brain development. ("Healthy fats" are necessary anyway.) Sugar stimulates our most primitive taste preference - sweet. Out of the womb humans prefer sweet but learn to like the other 4 flavors. Cheap food typically gravitates towards a combination of these 2 ingredients. Cheap food tastes great until you try it next to food made from high quality ingredients and prepared the way you want it. For example, I used to like white bread. Since getting used to the different flavors in multigrain bread, white bread is too boring. (By multigrain, I don't mean the refined stuff being labeled as multigrain. I mean the kind in which you bite into a chewy grain with a nutty flavor.)