Bad Fairytales

Growing up as a child in Wisconsin, one of the chef concerns of us children was being eaten. I think it was because of all the fairy tales we were told that involved children being the desired dinner of so many other fairy tale inhabitants. It only occurred to me many, many years later that this was not a very realistic precaution to teach your children. Now, I know: In Wisconsin there were actual practicing cannibals - many more than in any other state. In fact, I believe we had all of them. Nonetheless, these cannibals, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, et al did not actually seek out children for their grisly feasts but rather grown adults as an addition to their unspeakable acts.
Think about some of these children's stories we used to listen to. Jack in the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the three Bears and the one that sits in my mind the most: Hansel and Gretel.
This one never made sense to me: You have Hansel and Gretel who are lured out into the woods by a witch who builds a giant house made out of candy so that she can eat them. Why? What's so great about kid meat? It can't be because she's starving and just needs to eat something, because if she has the financial wherewithal and ingenuity to build a candy house, she's probably able to afford some good wholesome food, also. You don't need to hope some stray children wander by to get your protein.
And if eating children is your thing: Why do you put your candy-house-trap in the middle of the woods? It's an extremely isolated location and your odds of a convenient kid meal showing up is not that great. Why not near a playground or a pre-school or somewhere else children gather? I'm not condoning, mind you, but I'm just saying. You could at least be a little more rational about it. There just isn't that much foot traffic where you placed your trap isolated out in the middle of nowhere.
OR: -- and again, I'm not condoning - why didn't she just put up her own daycare? I'll bet you medieval state licensing of those facilities wasn't all that great. If she kept her prices down, she'd get a lot of business and I'd bet that medieval state licensing wasn't all that strict.
Here's the main question: How does someone get a taste for children in the first place? Do you accidentally eat a child and realize that they taste really good? Were the other witches talking about it one day over a cauldron stirring and she thought she would try it out. Or maybe (and this is my guess) somebody reads you fairytales in your youth about witches eating children and it just sticks in your mind that there has to be a reason so many people want to eat children so badly and maybe it's because children are really, really good.