if our evolution led humans to crave calorie dense, fatty, sweet, and salty foods, why dont people find a stick of salted butter dipped in sugar to be delicious?
In: Biology
Well, in a roundabout sort of way, that’s what a doughnut is. Or a sandwich from Subway.
Most of us if not all of us lack an instinctive “off” switch for our appetite for these precious nutrients and calories.
See also: all fast food ever.
Food preference is also heavily based on culture. For example I believe in Australia there’s something called Faery Bread, basically butter and sugar on bread. Or Sweet Tea from the south tastes disgusting to people that don’t grow up there.
someone’s never been to a big state or county fair.
mostly, people dislike the **idea** of eating a stick of butter, because we still have one last shred of common sense. most people, if blindly tasting your friend butter treat would in fact…..like the taste
Ever started making cookies, and did the first step of creaming the butter and sugar(s) together – and then stuck your finger in and licked it?
That’s *exactly* what you describe, and it is DAMN delicious.
thats… thats what butterscotch candy is….
its delicious. you have to get the ratios right, but thats basically the start of every carmel recipie
In the right proportions, we (people) do find that delicious. Add more sugar and you basically described frosting.
If you don’t find that delicious, it’s probably a sign you got the ratio wrong. More sugar relative to the butter, maybe? Eating a mixture of sugar and butter is a lot more enjoyable than eating one ingredient on its own.
Our bodies aren’t stupid. They know that trying to live off nothing but salt is bad for us. Nothing but honey? Also bad. Nothing but fat? Bad. Those who didn’t understand that instinctively probably died out.
If you want to trick your body into enjoying large quantities of bad stuff, you need to mix it together in a way that makes it seem more palatable. Try one part sugar, two parts butter, three parts white flour, a pinch of salt. Mix, flatten, and bake into cookies. Now your body can’t tell that it’s dangerous. Not enough people in the past died of cookies to affect evolution.
They don’t? Give homemade shortbread a go.
I was going to say it is probably a learned aversion, I’m pretty sure I’ve indulged in a large portion of each of the parts seperately and each has made me feel profoundly unwell so the idea of stacking excess butter, particularly a very salty butter and excess sugar would assumably make me feel all three profound unwells at the same time but you could easily get me to eat a muffin that is indirectly a smaller portion of each.
Who says that it’s NOT delicious?
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