Episode 61 Is it true that healthy foods all taste bad?

In this episode, I debunk the myth that equates healthy with tasteless.

We often tell ourselves stories that are simply not true, and definitely not helpful. These stories may seem true for us because we are eating foods drowning in tomato or barbecue sauce; and in general eating lots of high sugar and high salt foods that are engineered to encourage you to want more.

If this is you, it's time to open your mind and rewire your palate to embrace and enjoy the vibrant, delicious world of nutritious eating.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay

Transcript

Fiona Kane: 0:31

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I'm going to talk about something I have talked about before, but I think it is worth bringing up again because I hear this a lot and I think it's really important to discuss. So something that a friend of mine used to say to me all the time is. He used to say Fiona, how come it is that healthy food all tastes bad and that unhealthy food all tastes good? I can never do the right thing, get better, go on a diet, whatever it is, because that's the fact. So he saw it just as a basic fact that healthy food tastes bad and unhealthy food tastes good. And in his mind that was set. And I used to say to him and I've said this so many times to him he just didn't listen to me, he didn't want to listen. That's just simply not true.

Fiona Kane: 1:31

Now, is it true that some so-called unhealthy food tastes good? Yes, of course, things that are salty and sugary, whatever they certainly are made, and actually they're made specially made to make you want to eat more, right? So there are people, chemists and nutritionists and all sorts of people who get employed to find that bliss point of a food so that certain taste, that certain flavor, that certain mouthfeel and that's the bliss point of the food that gives you that dopamine response and makes you want to eat more and more. So, yes, does it exist? Absolutely. Are there foods that are like that? Absolutely, I would name chocolate as being on the top of my list for that right. So, yes, there are foods that are less healthy or sometimes unhealthy that taste good. They don't all taste good, though. Not all unhealthy foods taste good. There's a lot of unhealthy foods, I would argue, taste terrible. So just because you go into the supermarket and there's all of these lollies and things like that, some of them are just revolting. So some junk food tastes really good, some junk food tastes awful, right. So you could say the exact same thing about healthy food, right? Some healthy food tastes awful, some tastes really good, but I would argue that most healthy food actually does taste really good, because real food does taste good, but it's also what you do with it.

Fiona Kane: 3:05

And actually I saw this recently we're running a health challenge at the moment, which we do with gyms, and so we're running a six-week challenge at the moment with a gym and someone said oh, you know one of the recipes that we have. She said oh, my son ate it last night and he normally doesn't like. I can't remember there was two things in it that he didn't like. So he didn't like. I can't remember exactly, but it was zucchini and something else. I don't know if zucchini and carrot or what it was, but zucchini and something else. And she said my son doesn't eat those, he doesn't like those. But they were in this meal and very clear. They weren't kind of hidden in it. It wasn't like they were grated in and hidden in a bristle. They were very obviously sitting there, right. But this child really enjoyed it.

Fiona Kane: 3:47

So a lot of it is how you do it right. It's how you cook it or how you flavor it or what you do with it. So it's not simply about whether or not a food tastes good or not, it's actually what you do with it. And so many of us kind of you know I've talked about it before we try a food when we're five and we didn't like it then and forevermore we don't like it. And how do you know that it just wasn't just really badly cooked, or maybe because you're a child, you had loads of taste buds and it just tasted really strong. And now you're an adult, it would taste completely different, right? So I think it's really important that if we're saying to ourselves or if you hear someone like your children or someone in your family saying you know, healthy food tastes bad, that's not true. Now it can. It can taste bad, bad, but it can taste great. So it depends what you do with it.

Fiona Kane: 4:37

I know when I was a child, I used to complain because the sort of salad that we had when I was a child was kind of the iceberg lettuce and tomatoes from the supermarket, which were always awful and um, or maybe a bit of, I think. We used to have some canned beetroot and some, and we used to have cucumber. That was pretty much it, I think, but all very close to that and I hated it. It was so boring and like. I didn't like it because a lot of that stuff was just stuff from the supermarket that doesn't taste very good and I just found it really, really boring. So I thought, well, yeah, it tastes really bad. So I had a real thing in my mind about salad tastes bad, right. However, now the way I do my salads, so I really do iceberg lettuce now, but I don't mind it. I just I do all sorts of different ones right.

Fiona Kane: 5:26

Or you might do spinach leaves, but I'll add olive oil. You can even add olive oil that's got an infusion, so it's got infused herbs, or garlic or ginger or whatever it is that you like. There's so many Cobram have a lovely range of those olive oils. Or you could add the herbs yourself. I will add something like some warm pumpkin to a salad and it could be spiced, or it could just be drizzled with olive oil, salt pepper, whatever, but just adding a warm food to a salad. So something like a pumpkin can be really nice In the summer.

Fiona Kane: 5:57

I might add some fruits. It might be some peach or some nectarine or some mango to a salad. Or you could add a bit of orange or something like that, but certainly adding a bit of something like a bit of fruit to a salad, pomegranates and I can't think of the others. But figs you put figs in salads. So obviously putting bits of fruit, that kind of thing in a salad can make a big difference.

Fiona Kane: 6:19

I always put nuts and seeds in salads. So I'm always putting in my pepitas and my sunflower seeds, and often it's walnuts, it might be cashews, it might be pecans, it depends on what the salad is. It might be pine nuts or macadamias, but certainly nuts and seeds. You put them in a salad, you've got fat and oil and you've got that crunch and that beautiful flavor. So I really like that.

Fiona Kane: 6:44

I like it when a salad has lots of different. So it's got the oils and it's got the crunch, and then it's got. You've got some avocado in there as well, you know, and I will grate in something like some raw beetroot. So I just love raw beetroot just grated into a salad, and I'll grate in some carrot as well. But you sort of so having all those different colors, it looks good because there's so many different colors and you've got crunch in there and you've got the sort of fats and you've got all the different mouthfeels and so a salad like that, and then you add into it some sort of protein. So, whether or not I might have some boiled eggs and I'll often boil them, kind of soft boiled, so the yolk's a little bit softer in the salad. But whatever you like, hard boiled, whatever makes you happy. You might have in there some salmon or some ham or some chicken, or you might have some chickpeas or four bean mix or whatever it is, whatever protein or it might be some feta or some goat's cheese or some what's the other one that's common.

Fiona Kane: 7:41

Halloumi is really nice in a salad, so salad can be great, and so it's kind of about adding all of those extra colors and flavors and it looks beautiful and it tastes beautiful. So I really love salads now, I love my own or I love the ones that are made like that, but I just hate the boring old sort of salad, right? So I could have told myself for the rest of my life I hate salad, I'm never going to eat salad. But I've just discovered there's a different way of doing salad and sort of. I've learned that from different friends who are from different parts of Europe, et cetera, who have taught me different ways of doing yummy salads, including things like a beautiful potato salad, which I learned from my Polish relatives, right. So you can learn different ways of doing food, that you discover that they can be really, really nice when you just use the right oil or cook it at the right temperature or put it with the right accompaniment or whatever it is.

Fiona Kane: 8:35

So when people say that healthy food tastes bad, no, I have food that tastes good every day. I wouldn't want to eat it if it didn't taste good. So I have eggs for breakfast most of the time and I'll have some if I've got whatever vegetables I have. I might have some vegetables in there, or I might have a bit of ham or something like that. And then at lunch I might have something like rice cakes and salmon with avocado or something along those lines. It might be a bit of leftover from last night's dinner, might be a four bean mix with some salmon and there might be some leftover pumpkins. I might put that in there right, or some greens or something.

Fiona Kane: 9:14

And then for dinner I'm always looking at all of the different colors of the rainbow vegetables. Well, I'll be honest, I don't always do that when I'm paying attention. I do, and I'm paying attention a lot at the moment because we're running a Life, your Gut program right now, so I'm really focused on it. It's really, really important to get all of the colors Not saying I don't do that at all, by the way, just saying that I don't remember to do it every night. But then usually throughout the week, I start to notice how I feel and kind of go hang on, I'm not eating enough vegetables, and so I'll pay attention and start looking at how many vegetables I'm having. Now.

Fiona Kane: 9:52

I was actually just listening to a podcast earlier today and there was a gastroenterologist on there and he used the. He kind of had this letter thing where he had a sort of WWYMS and it was like what would your microbiome say? So your microbiomes or your gut microbes and stuff? So what would your microbiome say? So your microbiomes or your gut microbes and stuff? So what would your microbiome say? And that is important and that's actually like I said, we're running Love your Gut program at the moment and I talk about this and I need to talk about this in the group too. This is a reminder, but I talk about this.

Fiona Kane: 10:23

When I sit down to have my dinner, I look at all of the different colors on my plate and I say, oh, my microbiome is going to be happy. And I joke because sometimes, you know, I might eat some green stuff. I like some green stuff. There's other green stuff I don't like as much, but I will sort of have the green stuff that I don't like in amongst other things, or I might have it at the beginning of a meal. I'll quickly throw down the green stuff that I don't like. I don't like rocket much, but I'll eat it right. So most stuff I like but that I don't like so much but I'll eat it. But then I'll eat it kind of just before my chicken or with my pumpkin or with something else I like, just to sort of get it down. But I can say, oh, my microbiome will be happy. I don't know if I'm so happy, but my microbiome will be and it is important to feed your microbiome. If you don't feed your microbiome, it can and will eat your gut wall, which is a real problem. So you really do want to feed it and feed it the right nutrients, right.

Fiona Kane: 11:19

So don't believe that healthy food is not nice. Healthy food is and can be great and, like all foods, there's some that are not nice, some that are nice or some that you will like more than others. All of the rest of it. But it's about just exploring and finding ways of creating healthy meals that you enjoy and that you like.

Fiona Kane: 11:42

And the other thing, too, to take into consideration is that many of us, like I know that when I was younger I used to be addicted to Coca-Cola and I used to sort of pretty much just have sugar all the time. And when you eat sugar constantly, foods without sugar don't taste nice at all. So when I had that kind of diet I really didn't like the taste of healthy food and I couldn't drink water. I did not like the taste of water. Now it's the other way around, where I don't eat sugary things. I do, however, I really like the taste of water and I like the taste of salads and things, and so the sugar is something I might add as well to my diet different times, but it's not the predominant flavor. So I actually now can appreciate other flavors because I'm not having so much.

Fiona Kane: 12:31

And even just an example of like in my tea. I think I used to have two or three sugars in my tea and now I don't have any at all. And so if I think I was at a restaurant once and they gave me a tea and they put two sugars in it and I didn't know they had done that and it was in like a little paper cup thing and I went to drink it and it actually was quite. I nearly spat it across the table because it tasted super sweet to me, because I'm not used to that right, and with that. You can do it over time. So if you're having three teaspoons of sugar or four teaspoons of sugar, don't go from that to have zero, because there's no way you're going to appreciate that. But you can reduce it by half a teaspoon at a time, or by a third of a teaspoon at a time, or a quarter of a teaspoon, and do it every few days or even once a week or whatever. You just drop it a bit more, a bit more, a bit more and before you notice it you won't like the taste of really sugary tea or whatever the food is.

Fiona Kane: 13:25

So sometimes these things you need to kind of like media yourself down and to get your taste buds used to other foods. So the other reason you might not like the taste of nutritious and healthy food is just because you eat so much junk food that you are used to all of the artificial tastes and the sugars and the salts and the high levels of all sorts of not good quality fats. So sometimes our taste buds will get sort of a bit destroyed it's probably the wrong word but altered by just having so many of those kinds of things. Also, if you're a smoker, that will affect your taste buds as well. So things won't taste so good. So you might need a lot more of something to get the flavor. So just be aware that that appreciating healthy food can be hard if you're like I said you're eating a junky diet and you might need to sort of slowly bring in the healthy food and you might have to just play around with the flavors and the sauces and things like that.

Fiona Kane: 14:28

A lot of people. The other thing that I see really really commonly is people want to put barbecue sauce all over their meals and that's just sugar Like that's. Obviously again, that's someone who's just used to like strong flavors of like barbecue sauce is 50% sugar, right, and sort of strong flavors and things and you're not used to. Your palate is not used to flavors of just regular foods, because everything you eat comes coated in barbecue or tomato sauce. If you're one of those people, I would advise you just to slowly wean yourself off it and just try, like I said, try the infused oligos, try other things, because you will find that you can slowly reduce the sort of whole barbecue sauce, that kind of thing and just have much more.

Fiona Kane: 15:13

You know, use ingredients rather than food that has ingredients. So the barbecue sauce has ingredients and not all of those ingredients are healthy, right, whereas if you're using ingredients like olive oil and herbs and chili and ginger or whatever, or it's just the infused olive oil that's already got that in there, you're using ingredients, not foods with ingredients. So people who are used to eating foods with ingredients lots of packaged foods just get really used to those sort of strong flavors and it takes a while, but you can, but it takes a while to adjust that. So you don't just suddenly go from pouring barbecue sauce over everything completely to not at all. Or you can if you want to, but you might struggle with that. But you do a bit less, bit less, bit less and then you and you um play with other flavors until you find other types of like marinades and sauces and things like that that you can make yourself really really simply, that tastes really good and that will take over from the barbecue sauce, that sort of thing, and you will find you will start to develop a taste for and a palate for that when you get used to it, when you start trying that.

Fiona Kane: 16:21

So there's lots of different reasons that we think that food tastes bad and, while it can be true that we experience it as tasting bad. There's a lot of reasons why that might be the case. So it's sort of just working on those bits and pieces slowly to change that. But the other big thing and then I talk about it a lot and I started with at the beginning of this is it's your mindset. And if you tell yourself that all healthy food tastes bad, why would you want to eat it? So how are you going to convince yourself to eat it? You've just shut down in your brain. You've just said, no, it's all bad, I'm not going to do that right.

Fiona Kane: 17:00

So just be aware of the power of language and the power of those kind of really strong statements. Those strong statements have a lot of power to influence your choices and to influence kind of how your brain, kind of how your mind, your unconscious mind, feels about things. And if your unconscious mind has been told you know, all healthy food tastes bad, then that's how you go with everything. So you don't want to actively choose food that tastes bad. Who wants to do that right? So you actually have to challenge your thoughts about that, challenge your language around that, because it's not true and it might be true that you haven't found a lot of healthy food that you like the taste of, but I'm sure there's something and you can start with that one thing. So you can say well, actually, you know what I actually do like sweet potato, I like sweet potato fries. Okay, there's a start right. So you don't use language that shuts down any thought or options for the future. Your language has to be open to possibilities. So it could be at this stage I haven't found any that I like, but I'm willing to try as opposed to I don't like, or there is no such thing as healthy food that tastes good, because that is simply not true.

Fiona Kane: 18:17

And the more that you eat healthy food that has ingredients, that you make with ingredients as opposed to packaged things that come with ingredients, the more of a taste you will get for real healthy food and the more you will find you will taste things that you used to have and you'll be like, oh my God, how did I used to eat this? You just cannot eat a lot of things anymore once you start eating really well, for want of a better word the cleaner your diet is, the more you're just eating real ingredients and real foods, the harder it is to eat some of the other things, because straight away you taste the chemicals or you're overwhelmed with the flavor, or you're overwhelmed with the sugar or whatever it is, and it's just too much, and you find that your palate changes to the point where a lot of junky foods just taste bad to you. So it kind of changes the other way around. And it can do that, because I've done that myself, so I know that it can do that. So just be aware of your language around, as I say all the time, your language around food, your language around how you talk about healthy food versus unhealthy food. And of course, the other thing too is that it's about moderation, so we don't have to sort of get too caught up on that's healthy, that's unhealthy.

Fiona Kane: 19:32

Eat in a really balanced way, eat a little bit of the other foods, but the more that you eat in a really balanced way and you're eating these real foods, the more you will get a taste for them, the more you understand they taste good.

Fiona Kane: 19:43

Refer to recipe books or refer to Google or ask your friends on Facebook or whatever, but just get inspiration for how to make the healthy foods taste good.

Fiona Kane: 19:57

And if you don't like it cooked one way, try a different way and ask because you might have. Just you know, another thing too. Actually that's just really common in my generation is a lot of our parents, grandparents, used to boil vegetables to the nth degree. You used to boil peas until they went white. That doesn't taste nice, right? So you might find that the way that you cook something or the way that you've been taught to cook something might actually be what's making it taste really bad, not the food itself. Okay, so just open your mind up to new possibilities and understand that healthy food can and does taste really really good in most cases, and junky food can start to taste bad and not nice when you're eating really really well. So keep your mind open to that and please don't forget to like and share and comment if you're on Rumble or on YouTube and or, I think, is it called subscribe or is it called follow. But anyway, I really appreciate your support of this podcast and I'll talk to you again next week. Thank you, bye.