The Healthy-Delicious Matrix

            A short time ago, while attempting to improve my eating habits, I decided to start by thinking of the foods I knew of that were both healthy and delicious. Like any sane person on the sixth day of a 95+ degree heat wave, I immediately thought of watermelon. Seriously, I eat enough watermelon that I often wonder if I could stop drinking water and still stay hydrated.

As I thought more about these foods, I soon had a thought that interested me. If I were to make a chart of all foods, plotting the healthiness against how good it tastes, there should be some sort of front where I eat all the foods on one side and typically don’t eat any of the ones on the other side (assuming I’m in a situation where I can decided wholly based on my tastes, and not fear offending someone, etc.). I was curious what that front may look like. With that, the Healthy-Delicious Matrix was born, with healthier foods being farther up and better tasting foods being farther right. Mine looked a little bit like this (obviously this is a slimmed down version):

                Until about a week ago, I had long claimed watermelon and peanuts as the two champions of the food kingdom because of their position in the upper-right corner of the Matrix. That all changed when I saw the nutrition facts of bison and proceeded to eat a bison steak. Seriously, it tastes like beef with macros more like chicken. While on the topic, I want to take this opportunity to talk about bison vs. buffalo, since I may never get another chance. If you don’t know the difference between them, then you’re in the same boat I was before driving through Wyoming this summer. It turns out that they're really easy to tell apart – largely due to the fact that buffalo don’t even live in North America.

So that settles that age-old debate (please tell me I wasn’t the only one who didn’t realize this). And yes, I typically don’t eat burgers; I’ve had them from time to time, but they just never did it for me.

                Anyway, after coming up with my front on the Healthy-Delicious Matrix, I figured I might try to come up with some possible alternative fronts that might be out there. Here’s what I came up with. Remember that the vertical axis is healthiness and the horizontal axis is deliciousness: