2 ms·
Actually there is reason to not prefer foods that we have evolved with because we may have evolved short term trade offs for reproduction that happen to be bad
by hombre_fatal 3y ago
Actually there is reason to not prefer foods that we have evolved with because we may have evolved short term trade offs for reproduction that happen to be bad for us long term.
Classic example being how evolving with meat doesn’t make saturated fat good for us in the long term. And, further, replacing it with modern unsaturated fats (like canola oil) improves health outcomes. Your heuristic of "we've eaten it for a long time so it must be better" doesn't capture that.
Frankly, it seems inevitable that the optimal diet (one that maximizes health through all stages of life) will be a modern artificial one since it seems at its root just a technological problem. But we certainly aren't there yet where we can replace an orange with a synthetic orange pill. That is an interesting world to ponder though.