History Main / IfItTastesBadItMustBeGoodForYou

Think back to your childhood. Remember some of the food items you [[StockYuck really did not wanna eat for dinner]], but had to force down anyway? You obviously wondered why of course you had to eat such things, but it was healthy. If it was healthy, then ''why on earth did it taste so freaking bad?''

* When COVID-19 vaccines became available, health authorities stressed that side effects were evidence that the body was building immunity to the virus.

Sometimes, it may not taste bad, but ''[[BoringButPractical bland]]''. TruthInTelevision; as some very healthy foods are quite bland (depending on what you do with them, anyway; investing in a good spice rack and cookbook can work miracles.)

* ''Literature/TheBelgariad'': Polgara the Sorceress swears by this trope. She argues that if medicine tasted good, people might feel compelled to get sick more often just to get more of it.

* ZigZagged in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/GoofTroop''. Peg puts Pete on a diet medication that comes in the form of a granola bar. Pete, understandably, fears that they`ll taste bad; however, they taste so good he eats a week`s supply in one sitting. Peg informs him they're supposed to be taken with three square meals a day (not exceeding three), and unless they`re taken properly they might as well be the candy it tastes like.

** Another episode had Peggy decide the family would eat healthy, after a few days she decides only Bobby will eat healthy food due to the fact that a lot of it tastes horrible to them. It ends up being subverted later as Bobby has gotten used to the food and can't stand eating a regular candy bar due to it being too sweet ([[TruthInTelevision if you cut sugar to a minimum in your diet this can actually happen]]). He proceeds to realize that the wheat grass juice hes been drinking now tastes better.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Control}}'', a series of sidequests requires Jesse to expunge a supernatural mold that's festering parts of The Oldest House [[ParasiteZombie as well as some of its human agents]], and at one point, Jesse is given a pill designed to make her immune to it. All it does is cause her to smell an awful stench coming from the mold, [[JustifiedTrope which is entirely the point]]; said mold naturally smells and tastes delicious in order to tempt people into eating it and becoming infested, so making it smell terrible to Jesse makes her not want to eat it (in practical gameplay terms, this allows Jesse to explore areas where [[BeefGate the mold is so potent that she would previously take damage just by being near it]]).

* In ''VideoGame/{{Control}}'', a series of sidequests requires Jesse to expunge a supernatural mold that's festering parts of The Oldest House [[ParasiteZombie as well as some of its human agents]], and at one point, Jesse is given a pill designed to make her immune to it. All it does is cause her to smell an awful stench coming from the mold, [[JustifiedTrope which is entirely the point]]; said mold naturally smells (and tastes) delicious in order to tempt people into eating it and becoming infested, so making it smell terrible to Jesse makes her not want to eat it. However, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation the game offers no explanation]] for how the pill also gives her the ability to enter rooms where the mold is so concentrated she previously could not enter them without taking constant damage.

* In Episode 2 of ''LightNovel/TheRisingOfTheShieldHero'', Naofumi gives Raphtalia medicine to sure her illness, and she hates the taste. This makes Naofumi cite this trope.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Control}}'', a series of sidequests requires Jesse to expunge a supernatural mold that's festering parts of The Oldest House [[ParasiteZombie as well as some of its human agents]], and at one point, Jesse is given a pill designed to make her immune to it. All it does is cause her to smell an awful stench from the mold, [[JustifiedTrope which is entirely the point]]; said mold [[ForbiddenFruit lures agents with a euphoric smell and delicious taste so that it can infest them]], and making it seem disgusting allows her to avoid being tempted to consume it.

-->'''Dr. Hibbert:''' ''examining Homer's body'' Hmm. Another case of broccoli-related death.\\

* In ''VideoGame/{{Control}}'', a series of sidequests requires Jesse to expunge a supernatural mold that's festering parts of The Oldest House [[ParasiteZombies as well as some of its human agents]], and at one point, Jesse is given a pill designed to make her immune to it. All it does is cause her to smell an awful stench from the mold, [[JustifiedTrope which is entirely the point]]; said mold [[ForbiddenFruit lures agents with a euphoric smell and delicious taste so that it can infest them]], and making it seem disgusting allows her to avoid being tempted to consume it.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/AsToldByGinger'' has the creepy brother Carl playing as a feral wolf-boy. A bystander throws a veggie burger into his enclosure for him to eat and then Carl goes crazy after eating it. Despite the fact that he was told "you can't tell the difference", he still did.

->"How come everything I ''don't'' like is good for me and everything I ''do'' isn't?!"

[[folder:Film]]

* Graham Kerr developed the "MiniMax" method to counteract this: After his wife had a heart attack from the type of food he cooked on ''Series/TheGallopingGourmet'', he turned to writing diet books for people with diabetes and heart problems. He realized pretty quickly that the food tasted like garbage, and switched to adapting his old recipes to healthier cooking techniques, adding spices and low-calorie ingredients to replace fat and sugar instead of simply cutting them out. While common today, that was a completely novel idea in the late 80s.

* How To Cook That's video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_01RFp8Sbg Is Gluten-Free making you fat?] (an analysis of gluten-free food) has her concluding that it has only become popular due to this trope. This also has the consequence of making people treat gluten-free requests less seriously, which is a problem for those with a serious allergy.

* A lot of online recipes have complaints in the comments sections where people make "healthy" substitutions, such as skim/non-dairy milk or sugar substitutes, without understanding how the ingredients combine and the recipe doesn't turn out.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDjkmUsPMcc Thumper]] from ''Disney/{{Bambi}}''.