Snack Foods

                             
Recently I discovered the Paleo writings of J Stantion,
and am in the process of reading some of his articles. 

His position on snack foods is interesting, and very on point.

He says:

The Magic Of Snacks: Taste Without Nutrition

"Just as a movie set’s only constraint is to look good
for a few seconds from a limited set of camera angles,
a snack food’s only constraint is to taste good
until it slides down your throat.

And that’s what technology allows us to do:
create products (“snacks”) that tickle our taste receptors
far more than real food can ever hope to—but
that don’t come with the nutrition that selected us
to crave those tastes in the first place.

This is the reason that the concept “eat whole foods,
minimally processed” is generally sound:

if whole foods taste good to us,
it’s most likely because they contain nutrients we need,
not because they’ve been engineered to tickle our taste buds.

(Note that all modern fruits are heavily engineered products
of thousands of years of careful breeding: read Dan Koeppel’s
fascinating book “Banana” for a look at one typical example.)"

This seems to hit the nail on the head.