Originally posted by Dasa
I am waiting for the answer to my question.........
Where does all the tasty, healthy, colourful, plentiful and satisfying food come from - which without we would not survive?
How does it exist for us?
It could just as easily not exist for us.
This may be the first question that has stumped the science forum.
No guessing.
No fabricating.
No speculating.
Just the pure honest truth please.
Where does all the food come from?
"Lying science's" answer (but note I am being honest with you about it being "lying science's" answer):
Foods don't have flavors all by themselves. Foods are made of molecules, some of which can react with the taste buds of an animal. Typically these molecules will engender certain electrochemical reactions when dissolved or dispersed in the saliva in the mouth. The electrical stimulus will be carried by nerves to a flavor sensing system in the brain.
So the flavor of a food is not intrinsic to it. It depends on how a taste bud and the rest of the system in the brain interprets the molecules in the food.
The flavor sensing system can vary, from animal to animal, in how it senses the flavor of various things. Some people for example have a stronger reaction to hot foods, than others. Animals that have a taste for foods that are good for them, will be healthier and will reproduce more than animals that do not develop this taste. This advantage will serve them well. They will flourish.
On the other hand, animals will evolve to find plants and animals that are acutely harmful (that is, that sicken and kill quickly when eaten) to taste bad. The molecules that are harmful may or may not be the molecules that taste bad. Animals born with more ability to taste these bad-tasting molecules will be more likely to survive and reproduce.
Foods that kill slowly or that kill slowly in excess, like highly fatty foods, may still taste good because they are OK or even beneficial in small quantities, and in excess don't kill fast enough to keep an animal from successfully reproducing. For example fat provides energy in moderate amounts. Evolution doesn't care whether you die at 50 or 60 or whenever you are done successfully reproducing.
The healthful and unhealthful, tasty and bad tasting food all come about by the same process of biological evolution as everything else that is alive.
Well, there is salt. It's not alive, has no DNA, etc. But our bodies need salt in moderation. Animals who develop a taste for moderate amounts of salt will do better than those who don't so we eat it as a seasoning -- to make foods taste better -- not by the cupful.
Seasonings are important, to make bland but healthful foods taste good. Tofu for example. Sometimes they are used to mask partial spoilage which causes the food to taste bad. This is risky, but impoverished tribes may need to do it..
Nowadays most people eat more food than they need. When this becomes harmful to reproduction, people who are of a kind that does not do this, will become more prevalent.
There are some plants and animals that are so poisonous that they don't taste bad, because anybody who taste them dies. But they don't taste very good. Certain mushrooms and some frogs for example. Poisonous frogs are often certain bright colors and other animals avoid them on this account. There is some evolution going on in the potential foods, too.
So that's the truth about what lying science says. Of course this is in everyday terms and may be imprecise and is incomplete. It is interesting, isn't it?
19 Oct '11 21:513 edits
Food
Back to Top