Evolution of Taste

[flano]

How has the sense of taste lasted/flurished in humans when most things that taste good are bad for you? All our other senses seem to protect us significantly more.

[smorodina]

Just a guess - but isn't it because in nature most things that taste good, like fruit, are actually good for you, and it's only since we learned to refine things like sugar that they became bad? As for other senses, take hearing - many of us love listening to loud music by our favourite bands, but this is very damaging to the hearing.

[woofgang]

bang on smorodina, that's the current theory. It also applies to the good "mouthfeel" that fat gives to food

[Loosehead]

The food you refer to is bad for you if you are not starving but to someone starving the high calorie junk food you refer too is a life saver.

Also the body is still designed to comsume as many calories as possible when they are available, on the, originally sensible grounds that you never know when you'll eat again. High calorie foods are therefore attractive to the survival instincts. It is this that is the principle cause of obesity in modern times. High calorie food being so easily available coupled with the natural anti-starvation system that we are all equiped with. 

[ludwig]

Also, don't forget that naturally poisonous stuff tastes bad, so our taste has evolved to identify it. Try going down to the woods and scoffing a bit of deadly nightshade and a few fly agaric mushrooms - I bet they taste foul.

[Calvesy]

Since the advent of fire, livestock and agriculture our food sources have been fairly guaranteed, so the survival advantage in allocating costly brain matter to tasting is not a priority

[Tim Baxter]

Just a thought but isn't taste the most evocative of all our senses, ie. the sense that can bring back the most buried memories?