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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   2771 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 17, 2024

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I think it’s fairly popular to think about evolutionary biology in these parts. Here’s a few things about food that come to my mind.

  1. The most fulfilling meals (to me but I think it’s common) are some combination of carb and meat. Hamburger, tacos, pasta, rice with various dishes. Why do humans have such a preference for mixed foods? Basically why do we cook instead of being equally satisfied with having a piece of meat and then some carbs later. All of human taste seems to be far more complex than what is necessary for encouraging me to eat the foods I need to be healthy.

  2. Why does my body have such a desire to store fat but when we look at potential mates we want the thin one. It seems like those preferences should be the same. Fatter mates would have more survivability in a famine. What’s good for my health should be good for the health of the person I want to have sex with. (Obviously being fat isn’t health maximizing in modern days but it was health maximizing in other environments).

  1. It's faster, maybe? Though it's not really that strange for someone to have something like steak and potatoes and eat the steak and then the potatoes or vice versa. Or maybe it's just preferring more flavoring to less. I don't know how you'd measure that though. Is grilled chicken in a tortilla more or less flavorful than fried chicken?

Don’t know. I think it’s a curious question that no one has written a book on. I mean even the food pyramid seems heavily disagreed with and no one really has a solution on a healthy diet.

Why do people myself included strongly prefer a Chick-fil-a chicken sandwich to a pop-eyes chicken sandwich? I don’t see any fairly evident evolutionary advantage to having that strong of preference but people will drive quite far to get Chick-fil-a versus Popeyes.

It does not seem to me that degree of optimization in our genes makes any sense.

A lot of food adds a status or ritualistic element that has some explanatory power. Like Miami is considered a bad food city but their prices are high and they combine a bit of night club in a lot of them.

This is a good example

https://www.thepoke.com/2024/05/17/1000-dollar-steak-crazy-clip/

But that’s showing your date you have such a degree of resources you can pay 20 other humans to present your food to them.

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