"If you believe that there is good reason that evolution may be guiding you towards something unhealthy..." I don't think there's any doubt about this. Compare

"If you believe that there is good reason that evolution may be guiding you towards something unhealthy..." I don't think there's any doubt about this. Compared to evolutionary rates, the typical diet in the west has changed at lightning pace from just a few decades ago, meaning our bodies and taste buds are behind the curve. We need willpower and common sense to have a healthy diet, rather than raw survival instincts. Unfortunately what's driving change in our diet is the demand for companies to serve food with high profit margins and low cost raw materials (e.g. high-fructose corn syrup). Capitalism is great for providing us with cheaper clothes and ever-cheaper computing power, but providing cheaper food means providing crappier food. There's no Moore's Law for food. I think it was here on HN I read about studies done in remote communities (possibly some remote whaling community) that had recently become westerised, and the diet quickly shifted to one more similar to a typical American diet. Within 5-10 years (or a relatively short time frame, can't remember exactly) obesity and type-II diabetes rates exploded. Another interesting story was reports from surgeons who operated on injured Afghan fighters from the current conflict. Normally when operating on westerners, you expect a certain amount of yellowish fatty tissue surrounding the major internal organs. This wasn't present on Afghan locals, which surprised the surgeons who were so used to seeing it on western patients and pretty much assumed it was normal up till that point. The difference was down to diet.