Comments on: We’re Not The Only Thing Evolving

By: Drew

Drew — Sat, 22 May 2010 19:27:54 +0000

Okay, I just finished watching it. I really recommend you watch The Botany of Desire. After watching the segment about marijuana, and how science didn’t fully understand why the brain would be sensitive to its “side effects”, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there is something more to our craving for sweetness than simple calories.

By: Drew

Drew — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:11:15 +0000

I’m downloading it now, so I haven’t watched it yet, but that sounds sort of like the “conventional wisdom”. But like I said, the sweet things evolve too, and they seem to do it faster than we do. So if we nurture and cultivate things that are sweet, we must like sweet. I suspect there some reason we crave the sweetness itself, not necessarily just the high calorie content. Because fat is even higher in calories, and we don’t crave it the way we crave sweetness.

By: How's it Taste?

How's it Taste? — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:41:47 +0000

Dan Dennett gave a short talk on TED that touched on this, that I found pretty interesting. The gist of it is that, 'We don't like it because it's sweet, it's sweet because we like it.' i.e. it's got a lot of energy, which we need, so we evolved a sweet tooth to like those high-energy foods, such as honey. Mr. Dennett, of course, explains it much better than that.