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>Or maybe those who grow up with it will be better able to control themselves.

Get hooked at young ages, and their tastes develop around the overly sweet/salty foods. Thus becoming adults still addicted to them. Especially with marketing to young children(Animals, Colorful packaging, etc).

Combined with the both parents working, 'busier' modern lifestyle lots of families don't have time to cook 'real' food or dinners. So quick and easy food with low nutritional value is substituted.



> Get hooked at young ages, and their tastes develop around the overly sweet/salty foods. Thus becoming adults still addicted to them.

Anecdotal, but I've noticed that higher caliber restaurants have very subtle flavors. As opposed to mass produced/fast food that tend have very strong flavors.


Subtle aka bland.


I'm not sure these are quite the same things. Take a North Indian curry for example: even it's detractors wouldn't call it particularly bland, but the flavors are obviously way more subtle than, say, pixie stix. This isn't particularly surprising given that you put half a teaspoon of a dozen different spices into a curry while the pixie stix are literally just sugar and maybe a single flavor, wired directly to a part of our brain that likes sugar.


> I'm not sure these are quite the same things.

People who enjoy bland things always say this. :) Those words mean the same thing "to me", does mean it does to you, wasn't an insult, subtle just isn't a word I use for food. I like what I like and I've tasted things people use that word for, I call them bland.


Eh, language is defined by usage and the usage of "bland" is pretty inseparable from its negative connotation. Hell, even all the dictionary definitions you'll find include negative connotations.


Um, yea, and usage deviates precisely because people adopt different meanings to words over time until a new meaning becomes the norm; thus definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive, so don't tell me how to use words. And yes, I'm adding the negative connotation on purpose, that's rather the point now isn't it?




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