Why do bad things taste so good?

I have noticed from being around my girlfriends that we are always contradicting ourselves. We tell each other how we want to lose a stone here and inch there whilst we sit in front of the television with a cup of tea scoffing copious amounts of chocolate sweets and biscuits. But no one and nothing will stop us from doing so and God forbid someone would actually try, ‘I’ll start behaving tomorrow’ you tell yourself.

Bad things tasting so good goes much further than just a few naughty chocolate bars and popcorn. I have noticed that it applies to everything. When our bank balance is looking rather miserable and the last thing we should be doing is shopping the urge to go shopping becomes far to big to control and where do you suddenly find yourself? Standing in line at the cashiers desk waiting to pay for that top or dress that you firstly have no need for and simple cannot afford, but the purchase just feels so good and so right and who needs to eat right!?

There is also something to be said for a night out. When deadlines are looming and the work is mounting up your brain can think of nothing better to do than go for some drinks with some friends or worse still go on a night out. You know that you shouldn’t but your brain is telling you that you’re not going to get anything done tonight so you might as well go out, enjoy yourself and start tomorrow. But you never do.

The justification we kid ourselves with in order to do these things is, unreal. So why is it that bad things taste so good? It is because when we know we shouldn’t we crave to do so. Most of it is psychological and is about how we have been conditioned since birth. Children are often told not to do things when they are misbehaving so what do they do? They retaliate in the only way they know how. They do the things that they are told not to do. We psychologically associate the things we like with fun. I mean you don’t associate a stick of celery with a birthday party but cake and sweets you do.

The other issue is procrastination and association. We procrastinate from doing and sorting the things we need to because we associate them as bad things. No one finds being broke fun just as a 3000 word essay isn’t going to be the greatest crack. So we counteract these things with good things. Unfortunately until we start thinking of work as something fun and regard chocolate as yummy as celery, bad things are simply always going to taste so good.