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Early humans' quest for food stoked the flames of evolution

• YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  >> Human ancestors who preferred the taste of cooked meat over raw meat began to enjoy an evolutionary advantage over others. “In general, flavour rewards us for eating the things we’ve needed to eat in the past,” said Dunn. >> In particular, people who evolved a preference for complex aromas are likely to have developed an evolutionary advantage, because the smell of cooked meat, for example, is much more complex than that of raw meat. “Meat goes from having tens of aromas to having hundreds of different aroma compounds,” said Dunn. I've made this point in recent conversations on HN about the ethics of eating meat. A criticism of eating meat is that an animal's life is more important than enjoying the taste of the animal's meat. The point though is that humans indeed eat meat because we like its taste, but we like its taste because we need the nutrients in meat. Our enjoyment of meat is not incidental and it's not a moral flaw. It's also not something we can switch off on demand. It's how our bodies work. It's the same with sexual pleasure. If we didn't enjoy sex there would have to be another mechanism to convince us to have it all the time, so that we can make more of each other. And if there wasn't such a mechanism, then there wouldn't be many of us left.