Why do humans have a preference to over eat or over indulge and not just be satisfied with what is needed to sustain their life and health?
In: Biology
Because we haven’t had time to out-evolve our hunter-gatherer instincts.
We’ve only had what you could call, for want of a better word, civilization, for maybe 6,000 years, agriculture for maybe 12,000 years.
For the other 95-98% of time that humans have existed as humans, we were hunter-gatherers.
When you’re a hunter-gatherer, you don’t have much in the way of stored food, you don’t have a harvest you’re expecting or a granary, or a pen full of sheep you keep for wool, but could slaughter for food if times get lean.
You *don’t know* where your calories are coming from tomorrow, so **you eat whatever you can as much as you can TODAY.** Back then, those impulses served us well. Storing up some extra calories in good times could make the difference between surviving a lean season and succumbing to starvation and disease.
Having a relative overabundance of cheap calories available is an extremely recent phenomenon. Even in “civilized” countries, it’s only become common in the last 50-100 years. Before that, mostly only the wealthy and powerful could afford to become fat.
So… even though you know you have all the calories you need, you’re still attracted to calorie-dense foods, as much as you can get, and it takes a lot of effort for your nice modern forebrain to overcome those impulses.
This is especially true if you grew up poor, in a situation where you *didn’t* necessarily always have enough to eat. It tends to kick those instincts into overdrive, and they stay with you into adulthood.
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