Our love of soft, sweet foods goes back even further than we imagined

This morning I sliced ​​a ripe banana and tossed it into a pillowy bowl with some fresh yogurt, but I wasn’t just mindlessly preparing another breakfast. I was tapping into a hunger that goes back to pre-human times. Do you have that nagging desire to eat cake or ice cream? They started sounding 30 million years ago.

Recent research into our early ape ancestors has revealed that American Journal of Biological Anthropology This provides compelling evidence about how we evolved to love soft, sweet foods, especially the kinds that are easily accessible from our treehouses.Examining evidence of early primate teeth discovered in fayum depression In Egypt’s Western Desert, researchers from New Zealand, Spain and the United States concluded: “Our ancestors took a long time to move away from a diet centered on soft fruits.” That bias could in turn affect everything. our ability to detect colors in our social behavior. We still see the line, just like food companies know we still don’t like sweet or soft foods.

It’s long been known that we humans manipulate ourselves to crave sweets. What’s interesting about this new research is how far back our taste for sweetness goes and how texture, not just taste, has played a role in shaping how we eat, evolve and survive. I’m saying that. Let’s start with the sweetness.

“Early primates evolved to crave fruit because these foods are high in calories and can be consumed in small amounts, which are good for your health,” he explains. Gabriel YapSenior writer of gourmet site carnivore style. This craving is an evolutionary advantage that helped our ancestors survive and pass on their genes. (We also evolved to seek out fat, which helps protect our internal organs, conserve energy, and keep us feeling full.) It’s been an evolutionary love affair ever since.

Dr. Sumeet Kumar, PhD Genetics, Founder of Genetic Information Business genetic wellness, pick up the story from there. “Sweet taste signals the presence of energy-rich nutrients essential for survival. This means that the sensation of eating sweet food triggers the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward, which enhances feelings of well-being. “A sweet tooth is now deeply embedded in our genetic makeup. The evolution of sweet taste receptors highlights the biological reasons why we like sweet tastes.” he continues.

Sweetness indicates safety, especially for our descendants. “Bitter taste is usually associated with toxic compounds, and sensing the taste can help children avoid ingesting natural plant materials that can cause poisoning,” says Dr. Dr. Brian Kwok Leefood scientist, food industry consultant, book author “I answered 150 questions about food science.” “This is an important taste characteristic, especially for children. Because children are smaller, they are more likely to die from lower concentrations of toxins.”

We are also pursuing softness. Millions of years before we understood cooking, for our fruit-loving pioneers, tiny crumbs were a simple signal that food was ready to eat. It also showed that food became much easier to consume. A 2022 New York Times feature on the science of chewing said, “Chewing hard foods requires significantly more energy, and research suggests that… Metabolic cost of chewing It may have played an important role in our evolution. ”

And when you combine software and Great, you’ve got a big stake in evolution. “Sweet and soft foods are usually thought to be easier to digest and calories may be absorbed or stored more quickly,” explains Kwok Lee. “For example, unripe and hard bananas contain high concentrations of resistant starch, which is very difficult for humans to break down. However, ripe bananas have a soft texture due to their high sugar content. , which is easy for humans to chew.”

He added: “Foods with high concentrations of sugar and fat tend to be soft, so early humans had access to very energy-dense foods that were not difficult to break down.”

Thousands of years later, sugar, fat, and softness are still the comfort food bonanza. His 2017 study, published in the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, found that what we think of as comfort foods have in common: “On average, soft, smooth, sweetAnd probably has a salty/umami flavor. ” A 2014 study by on How texture affects calorie intake Dipayan Biswas, a marketing professor at the University of South Florida, seemed to reinforce that idea. In one experiment, participants who were given soft and chewy brownies put away significantly more than those who were given hard brownies.

We may have evolved to want something soft and sweet, but we also evolved from trees to Costco. Most of us don’t spend our days hunting or gathering, so we don’t need to eat as much as usual, even if the pull is still strong. “For most of history, humans lived in a state of food scarcity.” Dr. Kristen Cupples Cooper, founder of Pace University’s Master of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics program. “Food was difficult to obtain and required a huge amount of time and energy. Sweet foods may have been appealing to the human palate because they were high in calories and therefore provided energy to sustain life. She said, “The problem is that even today, not only do we prefer the taste of sweet foods, but they are also fairly easily available and, in most cases, affordable.” Many say it’s not fruit that hangs on trees in nature, but rather processed foods that have added sugar and other chemicals that can be harmful to our bodies. For example, sweet foods were sometimes beneficial to us, but other times harmful.

So why have some of us evolved to find sweet, soft things easier to resist than others? Some people go all-in on a box of strawberry donuts, while others just leave it at that. Why do some people eat it or leave it alone? Again, it’s evolution.

“Humans are genetically very diverse in terms of the number of sweet taste receptors found both on the tongue and in the gastrointestinal tract,” says Dr. Brian Kwok Lee. “These receptors help signal to the brain that there is a high concentration of readily available calories. Having a high number of sweet taste receptors means humans can choose foods that offer an energetic benefit. Humans who don’t have as many sweet taste receptors might not be able to do that.” It makes it easier to identify these good food sources. ” “Differences in human sensory perception remain with us today,” he says. I would like to take this as proof that my love of pudding is evidence of the resourcefulness of our ancient ancestors.

“Human craving for sweet, soft foods is a complex trait, shaped by millions of years of evolution designed to optimize energy intake and survival,” concludes Dr. Sumeet Kumar. I am. “As a source of comfort and joy.”