What damn fool

[xyzzyplugh]

hardwired our brains to crave suger nicotine coffee etc.when they're all bad for the heart? Is homo sapiens a kame kaze or is the maker a pisstaker?

[Miss Zippy]

I know it's a bit anti-PC, but the government could have the majority of this nation's health problems sorted if it commissioned research into genetically modifying brussels sprouts and the like to taste like chocolate/Big Macs etc etc. Sorry, I haven't answered your question have I? :-)

[wildwood]

I like your question ziggy, don't know the answer but I like the Q.
It does not seem to be restricted to Humans though, many pet animals can also become addicted to 'bad foods'.

[gazzawazza]

It could be the latter xyz. I remember reading the Old Testament (many years ago so I can't give the book or verse now, but it'll probably be in Genesis somewhere, I'm sure someone will put me right).

The gist of the passage was that God saw that people were working together and getting along too well so He made them speak in different tongues so they couldn't understand each other, and scattered them to the far ends of the earth... Now is that a wind up or what?!

[gazzawazza]

I've found it now, it's Genesis chapter 11.

[TheHitMaker]

I don't think that we are wired to crave these things, but that these things have worked out how to make us crave them - subtle difference, but enough to explain it!

[Kit]

The maker's probably thinking extremely logically - we were once hunter-gatherers. If you have to find food, and especially if it's hard to come by, you need the highest possible calorie intake from the smallest amount of food.So we naturally prefer calorie-rich food high in fat, sugar and carbs - salad tends to be more of a turnoff because stone age man would have had to find so much of it to be useful. High cal stuff is only bad for the heart because we consume far more than we actually need. Get out and hunt down that woolly mammoth now!

[Kit]

I do however realise that this doesn't explain nicotine and coffee addiction.... unless this gave stone age man the energy to run away from sabre toothed tigers, and then tell his mates about it over beer and a fag...

[incitatus]

the nicotine and beer thing is accidental. plants came up with these things as deterrents. Nicotine is supposed to stop insects eating the tobacco plant, and alcohol is dunged out by yeast to kill off the competition. The fact that we tasted them and liked the effects is an accident of convergent evolution. Kit hits the nail on the head with the sugar thing-we crave it because in the natural state we evolved for it is very rare. The ease of getting hold of it these days is our own fault. other accidental crossovers include cannabis (designed by the plant as an anti-cow defence. Who would have thought humans would like it?) and colchicine (defends a crocus from everything by killing them off, turned out to be a good gout drug....)