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 “an unhealthy amount of calories even being an option” just wasn’t a thing for like 99.9999% of evolutionary history. Food was scarce and unpredictable for thousands of generations of our ancestors, and there was always the threat of drought, injuries, sickness, etc. so **”eat all the calories you can find” was the optimal strategy that evolved.** That worked great since it was basically impossible to regularly find and eat enough calories to be a problem.
All of that changed only about 100 years ago, with calories suddenly being easily available all the time. 100 years is a fraction of a blink of an eye compared to the speed of evolutionary adaptations. It’s just WAY too recent a change, and so we’re all still running the “eat all the calories you can find” program since that served the last billion years of ancestors really well.
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