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This isn't surprising. We're conditioned to eat great tasting food and lots of it. Most American cities have a car-oriented culture, along with sedentary lifest

This isn't surprising. We're conditioned to eat great tasting food and lots of it. Most American cities have a car-oriented culture, along with sedentary lifestyles; therefore, not much walking or NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis). It seems over the years, Americans are burning less calories, but consuming more. I usually cook at home now, thanks to the Pandemic. Looking at all the recipes I found online, I realized how much high-calorie ingredients you have to add to make the food taste delicious. I try to limit those ingredient or use lower-calorie substitutes, but it is challenging. I can't imagine how much fats and sugars restaurants put in their foods to make it tasty for the general population. Also, food portions have gotten bigger. We're used to eating more. Having a great tasting food filled with sugar or fats is not bad by itself, but eating a small portion of it won't be satisfying or satiating enough for most people. There's a Youtube home cook named Ethan Chlebowski who sometimes does low-calorie versions of certain foods. I think more people need to do that--give great recipes that can taste almost as good as the high-calorie versions.

mpol 6y ago
> I realized how much high-calorie ingredients you have to add to make the food taste delicious. Is that not a trap? Most professional cooks who want to stand out use lots of salt and sugar, sometimes up to a point that I find it disgusting. I can imagine if you are used to that much salt and sugar, you need it again to taste anything. But believe me, you can unlearn it and start to taste the food itself, instead of the added salt and sugar. I learned the rule that a cook that uses lots of salt and sugar is a bad cook.
- war1025 6y ago
  I agree on the sugar aspect, but having been brought up firmly in the "salt is the devil" camp by my parents, it was an absolute revelation for me that the way you get rid of that hollow taste in food is by adding salt. I used to always make dishes that had all the right ingredients to taste good, but just didn't. The thing they were missing was salt.
  - kyriakos 6y ago
    Sadly there are numerous substitutes for sugar but haven't found anything for salt.
rsynnott 6y ago
> I realized how much high-calorie ingredients you have to add to make the food taste delicious What are these ingredients? When I'm cooking the ingredients I tend to overuse to make things taste good are garlic, ginger, chilis, and sesame oil. I suppose sesame oil is high in calories, but you don't use much of it. Deliciousness can come from lots of places!
- meowzero 6y ago
  Mostly fats and carbs (sugars). A teaspoon of olive oil is about 40 calories. And most people use a lot more than they realize, especially when it requires sauteing. That can add up quick. Also, using fattier cuts of meat compared to leaner cuts (chicken thighs vs breasts). Of course that's part of the "fat" equation. Besides flavor, mouthfeel is part of what makes a food taste good. Fats usually provide good mouthfeel for the average people. What I do to minimize the amount of calories I need to use is use non stick spray (near 0 calories for a splash of oil), leaner cuts of meat, and sugar substitutes like stevia. If you give people a meatloaf using turkey, sugar free ketchup, no breadcrumbs, and minimal use of oil OR a meatloaf using 80/20 ground beef with bread crumbs and real ketchup, they'll probably pick the "unhealthier" meatloaf if the seasonings are equal.
  - feoren 6y ago
    I don't have evidence for this but my gut tells me that people are not getting fat off of olive oil, and in fact if they used more it would tend to offset a larger number of calories from other sources.
    - meowzero 6y ago
      Olive oil is a fat. There is 120 calories for 1 tablespoon. Sure it’s healthy fat, but it still has a lot of calories. Butter actually has less calories per tablespoon than olive oil.
      - giantDinosaur 6y ago
        Nobody disputes olive oil's caloric content. It does seem like a stretch though to imply it has anything to do with the obesity crisis in the western world. Olive oil is not a recent introduction to our diets. Perhaps people are using much, much more - but that seems somewhat implausible, it doesn't actually taste that good by itself and I'd like to see something showing that the amount use to sauté the average unit of food has increased significantly in the past few decades. Either way, having tried/trying to gain weight I can confirm that olive oil is not particularly useful in that respect, it's easy to get ~80 calories with it but difficult to go beyond that. In a lot of cases you will not consume all the oil you used for frying or whatever anyway - so it is also misleading to imply that the volume used in cooking equals calories ingested, and unless you're cooking for yourself only, the amount needed to sauté e.g. onions is basically constant for 1-5 people, so you'd likely be consuming only a fraction.
Balgair 6y ago
Part of the issue is in training your taste. Yes, the super high calorie foods are always going to taste good. But that does not mean that the less caloric foods will not also taste just as good. My SO has a super restrictive diet (due to some pretty bad health reasons). My SO's taste has changed dramatically since being on the diet for some time. In that my SO can taste a single 'no-no' ingredient in just about any food item. I'm talking a single pepper-flake in ~4 hour roast. Things you may not think of as 'sweet', like broccoli or cabbage, are reported as near candy. It's taken a while, but the effects are real. I think that issue is a big deal with the obese: taste. Their tastes have become so desensitized that only the umami bombs of Doritos will elicit a response. Similarly with fats and sugars, only the largest signals are now received. Perhaps a way to deal with this is to just have the obese eat more, but of the 'good' stuff. To retrain their taste. Have a salad, a good one, and then eat dinner. Have an apple with breakfast, and then all the eggs and butter. Etc.

mpol 6y ago

> I realized how much high-calorie ingredients you have to add to make the food taste delicious. Is that not a trap? Most professional cooks who want to stand out use lots of salt and sugar, sometimes up to a point that I find it disgusting. I can imagine if you are used to that much salt and sugar, you need it again to taste anything. But believe me, you can unlearn it and start to taste the food itself, instead of the added salt and sugar. I learned the rule that a cook that uses lots of salt and sugar is a bad cook.

war1025 6y ago
I agree on the sugar aspect, but having been brought up firmly in the "salt is the devil" camp by my parents, it was an absolute revelation for me that the way you get rid of that hollow taste in food is by adding salt. I used to always make dishes that had all the right ingredients to taste good, but just didn't. The thing they were missing was salt.
- kyriakos 6y ago
  Sadly there are numerous substitutes for sugar but haven't found anything for salt.

rsynnott 6y ago

> I realized how much high-calorie ingredients you have to add to make the food taste delicious What are these ingredients? When I'm cooking the ingredients I tend to overuse to make things taste good are garlic, ginger, chilis, and sesame oil. I suppose sesame oil is high in calories, but you don't use much of it. Deliciousness can come from lots of places!

meowzero 6y ago
Mostly fats and carbs (sugars). A teaspoon of olive oil is about 40 calories. And most people use a lot more than they realize, especially when it requires sauteing. That can add up quick. Also, using fattier cuts of meat compared to leaner cuts (chicken thighs vs breasts). Of course that's part of the "fat" equation. Besides flavor, mouthfeel is part of what makes a food taste good. Fats usually provide good mouthfeel for the average people. What I do to minimize the amount of calories I need to use is use non stick spray (near 0 calories for a splash of oil), leaner cuts of meat, and sugar substitutes like stevia. If you give people a meatloaf using turkey, sugar free ketchup, no breadcrumbs, and minimal use of oil OR a meatloaf using 80/20 ground beef with bread crumbs and real ketchup, they'll probably pick the "unhealthier" meatloaf if the seasonings are equal.
- feoren 6y ago
  I don't have evidence for this but my gut tells me that people are not getting fat off of olive oil, and in fact if they used more it would tend to offset a larger number of calories from other sources.
  - meowzero 6y ago
    Olive oil is a fat. There is 120 calories for 1 tablespoon. Sure it’s healthy fat, but it still has a lot of calories. Butter actually has less calories per tablespoon than olive oil.
    - giantDinosaur 6y ago
      Nobody disputes olive oil's caloric content. It does seem like a stretch though to imply it has anything to do with the obesity crisis in the western world. Olive oil is not a recent introduction to our diets. Perhaps people are using much, much more - but that seems somewhat implausible, it doesn't actually taste that good by itself and I'd like to see something showing that the amount use to sauté the average unit of food has increased significantly in the past few decades. Either way, having tried/trying to gain weight I can confirm that olive oil is not particularly useful in that respect, it's easy to get ~80 calories with it but difficult to go beyond that. In a lot of cases you will not consume all the oil you used for frying or whatever anyway - so it is also misleading to imply that the volume used in cooking equals calories ingested, and unless you're cooking for yourself only, the amount needed to sauté e.g. onions is basically constant for 1-5 people, so you'd likely be consuming only a fraction.

Balgair 6y ago

Part of the issue is in training your taste. Yes, the super high calorie foods are always going to taste good. But that does not mean that the less caloric foods will not also taste just as good. My SO has a super restrictive diet (due to some pretty bad health reasons). My SO's taste has changed dramatically since being on the diet for some time. In that my SO can taste a single 'no-no' ingredient in just about any food item. I'm talking a single pepper-flake in ~4 hour roast. Things you may not think of as 'sweet', like broccoli or cabbage, are reported as near candy. It's taken a while, but the effects are real. I think that issue is a big deal with the obese: taste. Their tastes have become so desensitized that only the umami bombs of Doritos will elicit a response. Similarly with fats and sugars, only the largest signals are now received. Perhaps a way to deal with this is to just have the obese eat more, but of the 'good' stuff. To retrain their taste. Have a salad, a good one, and then eat dinner. Have an apple with breakfast, and then all the eggs and butter. Etc.