Comment by m_eiman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m_eiman | Hacker News Reader

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Why would the fact that we like things that taste sweet indicate that they were hard to find?

Assuming that nothing in how the body works happens for no good reason:

The fact that we enjoy it means that our body rewards us for eating it, something that most likely means that it's something the body wants us to do. If it was abundant, though, that'd make us eat too much of it (which is what's happening today) unless there was something to stop us. With salt it's possible to eat too much: that makes us feel bad. That suggests that salt was abundant, otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system. The lack of a counter system for sweets suggests that it wasn't abundant, at least not to the degree that we could eat enough of it to prevent us from reproducing.

Our bodies run on sugar; sources of sugar, such as fruits and starches were not hard to find.

Eveything we digest is converted to sugar, be it fruits, bread or meat.

Regarding the link:

That some of our ancestors two million years ago might have, or might not have, eaten mostly fruits doesn't say much of anything about how Homo Sapiens work. In the article they say that even the Homo Erectus were omnivores, and that was 1.5M years ago. Things have happened since then...

First you speculate that salt was not easy to find:

  > The fact that we like it so much, as with sweets, 
  > suggests that it was hard to find.

Then you claim salt was abundant:

  > With salt it's possible to eat too much: that makes us
  > feel bad. That suggests that salt was abundant, 
  > otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system.

Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or not?

Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than (poor) speculation. The link I provided above is just one example showing that fruit WAS abundant, as regardless of what those creatures were, fruit was easily accessible.

It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about just about anything to reach just about any conclusion.

Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or not?

I revised it to abundant, but not as abundant as say air or water.

Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than (poor) speculation.

Of course it is. However, you also need to take into account that (most) natural fruit is far from the sweetness of the cultivated fruits we can buy in the stores today. Compare wild apples to shop apples, for example.

The link I provided above is just one example showing that fruit WAS abundant

It might have been abundant 2M years ago, where those ancestors lived. That says nothing about what happened the next 2M years, which is a significant period of time in evolutionary terms (at least 100k generations). If something changed, e.g. there was less fruit, the ancestors might have started eating other things - maybe become omnivores (like the next step in the chain towards Sapiens, the Erectus). Sounds like something that fits pretty well with what's known about our ancestry.

Going back to an arbitrary point in our history and saying that that's when Things Were Right(tm) and ignoring what's happened since then is no better than my speculations. At least choose at time nearer to now if you're going to do that, maybe 10k years ago when the latest major change in our diet occurred? Even that is 500 or so generations ago, so we should have had at least some chance to adapt to a farmer's diet. And by the way, the farmer's diet is what's allowed us to get where we are today in terms of civilization.

It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about just about anything to reach just about any conclusion.

It's fun! Doesn't actually say a whole lot without actual research though.

  > The lack of a counter system for sweets suggests that it
  > wasn't abundant, at least not to the degree that we could 
  > eat enough of it to prevent us from reproducing.

There is a counter system to eating foods that are sweet, provided foods are eaten in their whole, fresh, and ripe state.

Try to overeat on fruit - it's imposssible. You'll feel full and be tired of "sweet" long before you could ever overeat on it. Fiber and sufficient blood sugar have a way of telling one when they have been satiated.

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