Why is it that we perceive some tastes/smells as good, while others are bad?
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Same reason we evolved any of our senses: they aided out ancestors in survival. I mean evolutionary ancestor, so think a long time ago, including before modern humans.
Sweet stuff tastes good because it has a lot of calories, and getting enough food was a challenge our ancestors faced. Having a reward for finding the calories motivates us to seek it out more. Rotten or poisonous things often taste bitter or smell awful. We are very sensitive to stuff that smells of decay and death. Obviously this motivates us to get away from it, which is good bc it can kill us (disease).
Evolution isn’t perfect though. So our senses don’t always detect bad or good things. And it isn’t optimized for modern life. So sweets taste great still even though they’re actually so common that they’re killing us because of bad health effects
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