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Why does food taste nicer when you’re hungry?

Because you need it more. Hunger and taste are the mechanisms that evolved to encourage you, and indeed all animals, to eat what your body needs most. When you’ve used up all your easily available energy, you’ll feel hungry and crave sweet foods and carbohydrates. These will taste especially nice when you’re cold and physically tired, and eating them will provide much-needed blood sugar to power your muscles. If you’re starved of protein, you’ll find meat and fish and other protein-rich foods especially tasty. Pregnant women often enjoy completely different foods from normal because their growing baby needs different things. Evolution hasn’t provided a perfect system and we can all succumb to sweet foods even when we don’t need them, but taste is still a guide to what your body needs.

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