There's a fair bit of nutritional research and a few pop-sci books that cover it saying that in fact, if it tastes good, it probably is trash. If we define trash as food with a lot of caloric content but little nutritional content.

Much of today's food is designed to be addictive. There is little other consideration in its design or creation.

There is a reason there's an obesity epidemic in Western nations.

Avocado, salmon, and tuna taste really good. Are they trash then? What a stupid conclusion to make.

Avocado tastes like... nothing? I never understood the fascination with it. Maybe I'm eating the wrong ones.

Or you forgot to add salt.

The reason may simply be that food is abundant and cheap in Western nations. I don't see that as a bad thing.

I don't think so, considering obesity has skyrocketed since the 90s and I don't think we were starving then.

I think research points to a lack of physical activity, at least in children, as a casual factor.

Unhealthy food is abundant and cheap. Healthy food can be cheap too but it is not abundant.

Today's food is designed to be attractive to consumers -- manufacturers have made something people want.

Some people want cod liver oil.

Some of the food that I buy/eat, I buy because I believe it is good for me, not because I believe that it is the tastiest option. If I'm addicted to avoiding heart disease, that sounds okay to me :)!

Go to any Michelin star restaurant. The last thing they care about is nutritional value. Their primary concern is taste.

Food quality is defined by taste, not nutritional value. This applies both at the low end and high end.

Their primary concern is getting rich people to spend three hundred dollars per person. I've been to high end restaurants. It's not about food at all. It's a combination of a status symbol and show business. They're putting on a show for you with tiny, barely noticeable bits of food, and you are overpaying for it to show your date or business partner that you can afford it.

Haute cuisine is indeed often like that, but the Michelin guide is different. They've frequently removed stars from chefs for resting on their laurels.

Some day I'll get a reservation to Alinea... sigh

Fine dining generally has small portions, but there tend to be many courses and they really like to use meat so it actually adds up to a very substantial meal. If you ever go to one pace yourself, otherwise the last few courses will be quite unpleasant.

I've been to some restaurants with crazy number of courses. Last time I went I got to gorge on a steak that was significantly smaller than a matchbox. Honestly, the only good thing about these restaurants were wine pairings.

Your criticism is like saying a programmer is bad because they didn't solve the problem you're interested in when it's not their job to solve your problem, and they didn't use enough lines of code to do it.

Haute cuisine has always seemed highly experimental to me. And I think that's the point. To find new ways to cook food. Often in ways that are extremely impractical. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Some people enjoy the weird, others don't.

But to say that these chefs aren't driven by taste or that the prices are set that way so that their customers can boast? You must be a troll.

If you don't like them so much. Stop going to them!

Then save your 300USD and buy a month's worth of Soylent. I'll gladly eat tasty food in your absence. :)

How do you figure that 22 courses is a minuscule amount of food? Sure, since it is a tasting menu, the portions of each course are going to be smaller than if you ordered them in a non-tasting course. Overall, though, that's 22 different foods. This will probably take at least 1.5 to 2 hours for the eating, so it'll seem like more. Plus wine, if you should choose it. Additionally, I'm pretty sure some of the dining is the experience itself - at least for most of us, who rarely spend $300 on a group for dinner, let alone on one person.

And it'll probably be a bit better than fast food.

Besides, you can easily do things like have dessert, a bedtime snack, eat a quality breakfast and/or lunch. Or, you know, spend your money on something more fitting to you.

Edit: Forgot a line.

When there are 22 courses, you don't want each one to be very big or you'll never get to the end of it.

I don't know where the complaints about "tiny, barely noticeable bits of food" is coming from (other than ignorance) -- every high end restaurant I've been to, including those with tasting menus with many portions, has always left me very full (and it's not like I get full easily). The sum total of food across all the courses is a large volume, even ignoring the fact that the food is a lot richer/heavier than typical meals.

> Food quality is defined by taste, not nutritional value. This applies both at the low end and high end.

I think that's true - poor people need to choose calories in a palatable form, while rich people can pursue taste - but in between, there is a wide variety of food that can trade off taste for nutritional value.