Obesity is a growing problem in America, and as it so happens, it’s also growing Americans. As we grow by the waistline, so does our medical bills, mental health issues, and strangely enough the cost of healthy food. There have been programs, campaigns, research, and monetary incentives for people to work out and eat healthy, but no matter what people always seem to falter. I think that these are great ideas and have helped many people, but in the end are short sighted solutions to a larger underlying problem.
The focal point of our eating habits and overall lifestyle lies in the simple fact that we eat what is delicious. What is delicious, in general, is terrible for us. Why eat a head of lettuce when there are a perfectly delicious bag of cookies next to it. I’ll eat the lettuce next time. I do it, you do it, and if you don’t do it you wish you could do it. But why are those cookies that are so bad for us, so tasty and satisfying? It’s simple.

Taste buds.

I rely on them to tell me what is good for me, and all they do is lead me to the snack and soda aisle. They are the hero that has lived long enough to become the villain. It’s with this conclusion that I bring forth a revolutionary solution to the obesity epidemic: Taste Bud Removal.

Natural Selection

You see, in the before, time taste buds were an evolutionary miracle. We tasted plants, fruits, veggies, meats and everything else under the sun, and if they tasted bad we avoided them. We evolved to trust our taste buds to differentiate food that was nutritious from food that was poisonous. Those that thought the poison berries were delicious died, and their shitty taste buds did not live on. The secondary function of taste buds was to lead us to food that was higher in caloric count. We enjoy sweeter things because when we were cavemen we needed a lot of calories to survive. Those who thought sweet berries and fatty meats were delicious had more energy to bang like rabbits, hunt, and survive than those that just ate lettuce all day. So through this trial and error period based solely on my assumptions of how natural selection works, we have fine-tuned our taste buds for very specific types of food.

So, here we are at the pinnacle of our taste bud evolution that has selected the items that give us the most energy and calories for the least amount of work. These tend to be sweet things like berries and fruits, as well as fats and protein, such as meat and fish. Along with these high calorie foods, we also vetted out the more poisonous items as well. This was a good deal, up until today.

Now we have an abundance of these high calorie items; so much so that it has now become a plague on our societal pallet. We understand what is good for us, we know that the carrots and kale will make us live longer, but when pitted against a juicy burger and fries they just don’t stand a chance. Our taste is such a fundamental part of our lives that even when we know something is bad for us we will still devour it. Much like how our appendix no longer has any use, neither do our taste buds. They lead us astray when we try to eat healthy, relaying rewarding and satisfying signals to our brain when we really don’t deserve them.

Removal

Taste buds have turned into taste villains, and need to go. They are the lone catalyst here that is preventing us from eating healthy. It took millions of years to build the trust between us and our taste buds, but it’s time to part ways. What once was a joyous union, has now deteriorated to a toxic relationship. Our taste buds reward us for eating food that will cause us cancer, obesity, and reduce our desirability to the opposite sex. It’s as if they are trying to make use die a fat, lonely death.

If we part ways we would still be hungry and still crave to satisfy our tummies, but it wouldn’t matter what we ate. Instead of a quick burger, we could grab a quick salad. Instead of a soda, we could drink water and still be just as satisfied. As for poisonous foods, we can rely on the FDA and other government agencies that test and make sure foods are not poisonous and good enough to eat with a stricter and more rigorous vetting process.

At this point the only difference between the foods that we ate would be nutrition. Without the fantastic reward of deliciousness clogging our thought process, we can instead focus on evaluating the items that cater to our personal nutrition needs.

Economic health boom

Imagine the positive consequences that will come from this. Imagine the dynamic change in competition tactics from fast food companies who will compete for the healthiest and most nutritious food made quickly, instead of the tastiest food made quickly. They would have to do this, because with a burger and a salad tasting the same, the next priority is nutrients, and salad wins that fight every time. All of a sudden instead of a KFC double down, we have a KFC super quinoa kale salad down. Quinoa in-between tow beds of lettuce, all in-between two large pieces of kale. That sounds gross, but probably has all the nutrients you need for the rest of your life. Sounds like a sonic boom of health if you ask me, and if I didn’t have taste buds you could count me in for two of these bad boys.

Fast Food companies will be searching, creating, and selling only the healthiest meals around. With taste out of the mix, all that is left is health. This will rise exponentially to a point where we will eventually have meal bars that we eat once a day that will provide all the nutrients we need for the entire day. Our nation will be too healthy, and at that point we can export our health care to other countries, raking in the money. We’d live longer, and look better, and be healthier. All other countries would bow down to our sexiness and great health.

What does America export again? Oh yeah, pure sex.

Our health care costs would diminish because we’d all be too damn healthy. We would be younger for longer with more energy to do our jobs with businesses getting more out of their employees, so why isn’t big business on board yet? FDA would expand, creating more jobs, and with these new regulations resulting in new jobs in the private industry as they try to abide by them.

Joy

The concept itself is easy, but it also means taking away a joy that most of us have. We have felt the delicious satisfaction of sinking our teeth into a medium rare juicy burger. We know the joy of having a ten pound steak melt on our tongues. We have all felt the joy of curling ourselves up on the couch for Saturday morning cartoons and a bowl of cereal. These are all real joys in our lives, but in the end it could spell our doom. I don’t wanna give it up, but a heroin addict doesn’t want to give up his drugs either. So I guess there’s that.

It’s just sad that right now the unhealthiest foods are not only the tastiest, but also the most accessible and cheapest. It actually costs more and tastes worse to eat healthy than it does to eat unhealthy. This has created a corporate culture racing for the tastiest, quickest, and cheapest foods, which end up being the foods that are detrimental to our health. Without taste buds, tastiest would be replaced with healthiest.

“Yes, I am going to calorie splurge and get the mixed veggie rice cakes with carrot fries.”

“Water as your drink?”

“No, im feeling fat today, lemme get the spinach smoothie.”

Not gonna happen with taste buds around, that’s for sure.