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Taste buds have helped us evolve as humans. In the beginning, the sense of taste helped us test the foods we ate: bitter and sour tastes might indicate poisonou

Taste buds have helped us evolve as humans. In the beginning, the sense of taste helped us test the foods we ate: bitter and sour tastes might indicate poisonous plants or rotting foods. The back of our tongue is sensitive to bitter tastes so we can spit out poisonous or spoiled foods before we swallow them. Sweet and salty tastes let us know foods were rich in nutrients.

genericlogic 6y ago
You mentioned that 'the back of our tongue is sensitive to bitter'. I believe this is a myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map
starpilot 6y ago
Oddly today there's an obsession with certain bitter substances like caffeine, dark chocolate, and IPA beers.
lurquer 6y ago
There is no correlation between sweet/bitter and safe/poisonous. Many of the most poisonous berries are sweet. Belladonna is extremely sweet. Much of what is bitter (basically every non-sweet plant out there) is harmless. If you judged the safety of food by taste, I’m afraid you wouldn’t last long in the wild.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >Much of what is bitter (basically every non-sweet plant out there) is harmless. But is this a pattern because humans, like other species, find a niche where they can consume something that makes other life forms sick? It's always an advantage to be able to benefit from something others can't, so you're not in direct competition.
  - lurquer 6y ago
    > It's always an advantage to be able to benefit from something others can't, so you're not in direct competition. It is always advantageous to be an omnivore. The more things a creature can consume, the more it will reproduce and the more ‘niches’ it fills. Cockroaches, flies, bacteria, and — through the use of intelligence that enables turning virtually anything into nutritional energy - humans. There is never an ‘advantage’ to limiting ones foods.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      >There is never an ‘advantage’ to limiting ones foods. I agree in theory, if there were no tradeoffs required to consume any particular thing. But my comment took for granted that there are. Even for really versatile species, there are to some extent.

genericlogic 6y ago

You mentioned that 'the back of our tongue is sensitive to bitter'. I believe this is a myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map

starpilot 6y ago

Oddly today there's an obsession with certain bitter substances like caffeine, dark chocolate, and IPA beers.

lurquer 6y ago

There is no correlation between sweet/bitter and safe/poisonous. Many of the most poisonous berries are sweet. Belladonna is extremely sweet. Much of what is bitter (basically every non-sweet plant out there) is harmless. If you judged the safety of food by taste, I’m afraid you wouldn’t last long in the wild.

perl4ever 6y ago
>Much of what is bitter (basically every non-sweet plant out there) is harmless. But is this a pattern because humans, like other species, find a niche where they can consume something that makes other life forms sick? It's always an advantage to be able to benefit from something others can't, so you're not in direct competition.
- lurquer 6y ago
  > It's always an advantage to be able to benefit from something others can't, so you're not in direct competition. It is always advantageous to be an omnivore. The more things a creature can consume, the more it will reproduce and the more ‘niches’ it fills. Cockroaches, flies, bacteria, and — through the use of intelligence that enables turning virtually anything into nutritional energy - humans. There is never an ‘advantage’ to limiting ones foods.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    >There is never an ‘advantage’ to limiting ones foods. I agree in theory, if there were no tradeoffs required to consume any particular thing. But my comment took for granted that there are. Even for really versatile species, there are to some extent.