Learning to Un- "Junk Food"

The Junk Food Group

There is a food group called junk foods. These are foods that taste yummy but give the body mostly empty calories. Empty calories do not provide a good supply of micronutrients, or fiber, even though they do provide carbohydrate, protein, and fat that will keep you alive and active for a long time. Junk foods do not provide adequate nutrients for best and long-term health, energy, and freedom from sickness. They consist mainly of refined ingredients--those with significant nutritional value removed, such as white flour (p. 61) and white sugar. Many also include chemicals added to extend shelf life, give color, and to give texture and flavor. Many junk foods are high in fat and sodium.

Junk Food Taste Buds Can Change

​How many taste buds do you think you have in your mouth?  About 3000!

example, most Japanese like seaweed, but most Americans do not. Most Americans like a lot of meat, but most Japanese do not. Would you like to eat the seal blubber that Eskimo children enjoy? Why do we have these different food preferences? We prefer to eat the foods that we grew up with. If you have grown up eating junk foods, that's the reason you like to eat them.

If we let our taste buds start "growing up" with new food tastes we can learn to enjoy the new tastes. If you aren't excited about that idea, you can learn gradually, with small bites of a new food at a time. Also helping to prepare recipes with new food ingredients gives you a greater chance to become familiar with them and will help your interest in them to grow faster.
There is no need to feel guilty for liking junk foods. Just work on changing your preferences. Consider this poem when you think about the task of developing a taste for new foods:

Since my 3,000 taste buds are God's creation,
My love for junk foods is but an acquired sensation.
Thus, if I venture healthy food tastes to savor,
I will come to love their superior flavor,
Sooner or later!

​LN-58​