Nutrition–flavor disconnect: a Twitter thread
This is a Twitter thread copied from Justin Mares . The thread Italians aren't counting calories at all. They eat pasta, cheese, gelato and stay thin. When Americans eat similarly, they get morbidly obese and sick. What on Earth is going on? The flavor-nutrition disconnect, explained— Imho, the "flavor-nutrition disconnect" is the most profound nutrition discovery of our time. For millennia, flavor signaled nutrition. A sweet berry meant energy (sugar!), a bitter leaf meant medicine. Today, these ancient connections are broken. If we look at Northern Italy's obesity rate, it hovers around 8% (America's is 42%). These Italians are feasting on cheese, risotto, and gelato. Then why are American’s so obese? I suspect part of the issue arises from the 1940s. In the 1940s, America enriched flour with B vitamins to fight pellagra. It worked brilliantly as deficiencies vanished overnight. But it severed the ancient link between taste and nutrition that had guided hu...