4 ms·
I think there is a lot of truth to it but it's imperfect because too much of a good thing can become poison. For example, sugar would have been very good for ou
by jongjong 4y ago
I think there is a lot of truth to it but it's imperfect because too much of a good thing can become poison. For example, sugar would have been very good for our ancestors; they could have eaten as much of it as they could possibly find and it would have helped them to survive... But now with technology, we have access to quantities of sugar which would have been unfathomable to our ancestors; so this good thing turned into a bad thing due to its abundance and unnaturally low cost made possible by technology.
Bitterness is bad for us because it often signals the presence of poison. Spices are good because they help to preserve certain foods and prevent or slow bacteria growth (especially in hot climates were bacteria normally thrive; no coincidence that hot countries use a lot of spice). Slight acidity in flavor is good for the same reason. Our need for diversity of flavors is good because it encourages us to consume a broad range of essential nutrients without having to think too much. Protein is satisfying to eat because our bodies need it.
It's quite obvious if you think about it that our tastes are actually very well calibrated. The only flaws are that we tend to abuse good things... But even then, most of us will feel disgust after consuming too much of a good thing. Some of us are more fine-tuned than others on the abuse side of the equation.
I think that being overly neurotic about eating only 'healthy foods' even when they don't taste good is misguided. As Leslie Orgel pointed out "Evolution is cleverer than you are."
- zabzonk 4y agothe "coincedence" is that tropical countries are where many spices originate - it might be interesting to ask why this is so. some spices do have antibacterial/fungal effects, but so also do salt and (paradoxically) fermentation, where you replace any pathogenic bacteria with harmless ones. i have a jar of kimchee fermenting in the kitchen as i speak.
- colechristensen 4y agoMore or less every herb, spice, or medically active plant the flavor is a toxin targeted at pests, fungi, insects, bacteria, predators, etc.
- zabzonk 4y agowell, all plants produce antagonists against predators. but we in the north do not eat oak leaves, which produce a lot, or use them as flavouring. my point was "why are tropical spices so spicy, harmless and tasty to humans?", badly stated. i'm sure there are good reasons.
- wahern 4y agoMost tropical cultures have pretty bland food--tubers, ferns, etc. There aren't that many cultures with a strong tradition of very flavorful cooking, and if you enumerate them I'm not sure they skew tropical at all. The bias would be toward areas which at some point in the relatively recent past had large urban centers that provided economies scale for developing sophisticated cuisines with both ingredients and (perhaps more importantly) cooking methods for enhancing flavor. China and India are archetypes. Notably in China I believe the more tropical regions, e.g. Guangdong (Canton), tended toward less strong flavors as compared to more northerly, colder regions.
- zabzonk 4y agoi'd like to see some evidence for what you are saying here - the indian subcontinent (much of which is in the tropics), indonesia, malaysia (all of which are). all have highly sophisticated and spiced cuisines.i would not call any of them bland. and i have never heard of any humans eating ferns if they could not possibly get anything else. next time you come across a fern, try to eat it - i guarantee you will regret it. of course everyone likes tubers - potato, the worlds favourite food. eat avidly in all the areas i mentioned, and everywhere else.
- wahern 4y agoIndonesian and Malaysian cuisines have been strongly influenced by both China and India to the point where the dishes most associated with those regions are about as far from indigenous as you can get. I've eaten native dishes on the island of Borneo--it's comparatively bland (which isn't to say it wasn't tasty), just like the vast majority of cuisines everywhere in the world. Africa is the one continent I haven't traveled to, but while no doubt there are many good indigenous dishes, much noteworthy sub-Saharan African cuisine is actually heavily influenced by India (both directly and indirectly, through Arabia and Persia), with which it has had heavy contact for millennia, even before Britain brought over hundreds of thousands of Indian workers in the 19th century.
- thfuran 4y agoDon't tropical ecosystems tend to have high biodiversity? If tastiness+nontoxicity to humans occur randomly at some frequency in plants, I think the tropics would be the place to look for them, statistically speaking.
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