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Author | Topic: Why do apples taste good? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
taylor_31 Member (Idle past 5951 days) Posts: 86 From: Oklahoma! Joined: |
Thanks for your post! You obviously made an effort to explain the answer to my question and I appreciate that. Everybody else has made postive contributions, as well.
In addition, thanks for defending the sincerity of my question. You are correct in that multitudes of people are deceived by creationist propaganda. Though I asked one of the creationists' favorite talking points, I'm glad that you gave me the benefit of the doubt and gave me a strong and satisfying answer. (Many others did as well, and I appreciate all of their help.) As a nervous newbie with less than twenty posts, I definitely appreciate your support and offer you my sincere thanks .
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1495 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
He claims when his body is thirsty, it tells him to drink water. When his body is tired, it tells him to sleep. In addition, when his body is hungry, it tells him to eat. His body doesn't tell him to eat salad; instead, it tells him to eat ice cream or something similar. That is how he justifies his eating habits. Right, exactly. It's not a conspiracy of the universe that the foods that are bad for us are the ones that taste the best; the foods that are "bad" for us are actually really great foods that you would want to eat if you knew that they were going to be the last things you might eat for a long time. It's true that our bodies "tell us" what they want; those sensations are information about your body, like the way pain is. The problem is that our bodies don't know the future. While people living in our society are nearly always guaranteed a next meal, humans evolving on the African steppes most definitely had no such guarantee. What the body wants is not necessarily what the body should have.
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tudwell Member (Idle past 6006 days) Posts: 172 From: KCMO Joined: |
Consider yourself fortunate, because I never learned anything about the mechanics of evolution at my school. Same here, pretty much. I took biology freshman year (of high school) and didn't learn jack squat about evolution. The only time evolution has ever been mentioned in any of my classes is in psychology, where we spent about half of a class period on evolutionary psychology. We talked about the evolution of the "sweet tooth" (pretty much your OP). If it weren't for my extracurricular studies I would be terribly ignorant about evolution.
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Neutralmind Member (Idle past 6151 days) Posts: 183 From: Finland Joined: |
While people living in our society are nearly always guaranteed a next meal, humans evolving on the African steppes most definitely had no such guarantee.
So, is it likely, that in later human evolution we will evolve to like vegetables and "healthy" products more?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
So, is it likely, that in later human evolution we will evolve to like vegetables and "healthy" products more? Not necessarily: because alternatively our metabolisms can evolve to adapt to our diet. Indeed, this has already happened: look at how much more lethal a Western diet is to Polynesians than to Europeans. Or consider the geographical distribution of lactose tolerance, or alcohol tolerance. Or think of the fact that Britain has rodents which have adapted to live off discarded hamburgers. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Taz Member (Idle past 3319 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
Neutralmind writes:
No. One reason is that there is currently no visible sexual selection against people who don't eat vegetable. If there's no selection against people who don't eat vegetable or a selection for people who do, people who tend to like vegetables and "healthy" products more don't really have an advantage over those woh don't. So, is it likely, that in later human evolution we will evolve to like vegetables and "healthy" products more? We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current. Disclaimer: Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style. He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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Doddy Member (Idle past 5937 days) Posts: 563 From: Brisbane, Australia Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: I think we can rule out option 2 --- clearly having tasty fruit makes it more likely that the seeds will be eaten. Not really what taylor was saying. He was saying that perhaps the plant could accidently become tasty by using a defence mechanism that some creatures found quite palatable. As posted by Coragyps, chilli peppers (and bell peppers especially ) are yummy to many of us, but evolved that 'yumminess' (which, as you say, isn't inherent in the plant) to protect themselves. Contributors needed for the following articles: Pleiotropy, Metabolism, Promoter, Invertebrate, Meiosis, DNA, Transcription, Chromosome, Tetrapod, Fossil, Phenotype, Messenger RNA, Mammals, Appendix , Variation, Selection, Gene, Gametogenesis, Homo erectus and others. Registration not needed, but if desired, register here!
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taylor_31 Member (Idle past 5951 days) Posts: 86 From: Oklahoma! Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: Not necessarily: because alternatively our metabolisms can evolve to adapt to our diet. I'm not sure I understand. You're saying that our metabolisms can adapt to our diet, but I thought Western diets were actually worse for our bodies than other cultures (*cough* McDonalds *cough*). Have our metabolisms sped up or something to compensate for the unhealthiness? Have they adapted for survival benefits? Sorry, I'm having a mental block right now
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1495 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
You're saying that our metabolisms can adapt to our diet, but I thought Western diets were actually worse for our bodies than other cultures (*cough* McDonalds *cough*). I think the food police exaggerate a little bit, and c'mon, a hamburger can't be that bad - cows are made out of it, after all, and being made out of cow isn't bad for cows, is it? Starvation is always worse for your body than food. And there's a population of people in Italy who have evolved a mutation that protects them against heart disease (I think) resulting from high-fat diets. (Don't make me look up the cite at 2 in the morning, ok? Go use Google Scholar if you're really dying to know.)
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Doddy Member (Idle past 5937 days) Posts: 563 From: Brisbane, Australia Joined: |
taylor_31 writes: I'm not sure I understand. You're saying that our metabolisms can adapt to our diet, but I thought Western diets were actually worse for our bodies than other cultures (*cough* McDonalds *cough*). Have our metabolisms sped up or something to compensate for the unhealthiness? Have they adapted for survival benefits? Well, this is in fact getting away from the topic, but in fact those high fat, high sugar diets would have been great if you were a palaeolithic hunter - you would want all that energy. That's why they taste so good. The main problem is that now we don't have to hunt down our hamburger or trek across the forest for our sugary drink - we just drive through and don't even get up off our seats. Contributors needed for the following articles: Pleiotropy, Metabolism, Promoter, Invertebrate, Meiosis, DNA, Transcription, Chromosome, Tetrapod, Fossil, Phenotype, Messenger RNA, Mammals, Appendix , Variation, Selection, Gene, Gametogenesis, Homo erectus and others. Registration not needed, but if desired, register here!
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I'm not sure I understand. You're saying that our metabolisms can adapt to our diet, but I thought Western diets were actually worse for our bodies than other cultures (*cough* McDonalds *cough*). Have our metabolisms sped up or something to compensate for the unhealthiness? Have they adapted for survival benefits? Sorry, I'm having a mental block right now. Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear. When I said that "our" metabolisms can adapt to our diet, I wasn't talking about individuals adapting to the Western diet, but about the European lineage evolving. When Europeans pursued an unnaturally fatty diet, this tended to kill off those Europeans who were genetically less able to cope with animal fats. This gave a selective advantage to Europeans who could cope with such a diet, and so by natural selection Europeans are better able to tolerate such a diet than, for example, Polynesians. Polynesians have not gone through this evolutionary process, so the result is that if you feed 'em on a Western diet, they get obese and then die of heart disease. This is not to say that a diet of burgers and chips is healthy --- but people of European stock are much better adapted to such a diet. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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taylor_31 Member (Idle past 5951 days) Posts: 86 From: Oklahoma! Joined: |
crashfrog writes: I think the food police exaggerate a little bit, and c'mon, a hamburger can't be that bad - cows are made out of it, after all, and being made out of cow isn't bad for cows, is it? This is probably off-topic, but it's sort of relevant. I don't think a hamburger every now and then is bad, but certainly a diet consisting of hamburgers would be bad for you. Then again, I'm guessing that a diet consisting of any one food is bad for you, including "healthy" foods. For example, if I only had fruit all day, then I don't think it's any healthier than eating Twinkies all day. It's just that with Twinkies, you become fat, while for the fruit, you look good.
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taylor_31 Member (Idle past 5951 days) Posts: 86 From: Oklahoma! Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: When Europeans pursued an unnaturally fatty diet, this tended to kill off those Europeans who were genetically less able to cope with animal fats. This gave a selective advantage to Europeans who could cope with such a diet, and so by natural selection Europeans are better able to tolerate such a diet than, for example, Polynesians. Polynesians have not gone through this evolutionary process, so the result is that if you feed 'em on a Western diet, they get obese and then die of heart disease. Okay, that makes more sense, thanks. The question was would a diet of healthy foods have selective advantage over the course of human evolution. If our metabolisms did not evolve, then the selective advantage would take place, because people eating the unhealthy foods would die; but since our metabolisms did evolve, any selective advantage is gone, because people eating unhealthy foods do not die. Is that right?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The question was would a diet of healthy foods have selective advantage over the course of human evolution. I don't think it would. We don't have enough non-sexual selective pressure.
If our metabolisms did not evolve, then the selective advantage would take place, because people eating the unhealthy foods would die; but since our metabolisms did evolve, any selective advantage is gone, because people eating unhealthy foods do not die. That's sounds alright, but remember that everyone dies. What is really important is if you reproduce before you die. The selective pressure wouldn't be from not surviving the diet, it would be from being to fat to get laid, to put it bluntly. Its not happening because people aren't selective enough in their mate choice. Or maybe they are selective enough, but so low on the selective meter that its going to take forever for anyone to see any change.
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Taz Member (Idle past 3319 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
CS writes:
Funny how you mentioned this. Virtually all my fat and obese friends got married and produced children long before I even met my wife. That's sounds alright, but remember that everyone dies. What is really important is if you reproduce before you die. The selective pressure wouldn't be from not surviving the diet, it would be from being to fat to get laid, to put it bluntly. Its not happening because people aren't selective enough in their mate choice. Or maybe they are selective enough, but so low on the selective meter that its going to take forever for anyone to see any change.
We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current. Disclaimer: Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style. He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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