Why is it that almost all toddlers around the age of 2-3 have a tendency to just want carbs and hate vegetables? Especially green vegetables? I know that toddlers are fussy, like to control things, and are afraid of new foods. But why is it almost universally vegetables that they hate, when they’re so essential for our nutrition?
In: Biology
You have been misinformed. Vegetables are not essential for our nutrition at all. For millions of years our ancestors ate almost entirely meat. Vegetables, if they were eaten, were as a last resort in times of starvation.
Note that modern vegetables are very different from their wild ancestors, which were even less palatable than the varieties grown today, and it is only in the last few thousand years that plant matter has been a substantial part of the human diet.
Even recently there were societies which still adhered to this traditional way of eating. Either because vegetables just didn’t grow (eg the Inuit) or because meat was still plentiful and the area hadn’t been overrun by pastoralists (eg the plains Indians pre-Columbus).
And right now, if you wanted to, you could quite happily do without eating plant matter of any sort and be totally healthy.
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