Why has natural selection allowed most kids, and many adults, to not like healthy foods such as vegetables.?

Question

Most kids, and many adults, don't like healthy foods such as vegetables (assuming vegetables are indeed healthy and increase your survival rate). However, unless this is a recent trend (and I doubt it is), why didn't natural selection favor those people with the "I like vegetables" gene over those with a "I hate vegetables" gene. Do the children of other primates dislike vegetables (it does not appear so)? If not, why did natural selection allow humans to carry-on that gene? Furthermore, why do kids and adults prefer to eat unhealthy foods. Why has natural selection allowed that population to thrive?

Answer 1

The young of most species do not get the variety of food which we get, nor the quantity. Most food is eaten out of necessity, and mild hunger is normal. Sweet and fatty foods are not that common in nature, so perhaps our liking for them goes back to when we lived in trees or on the plains of Africa, and only had them rarely, like finding a bee hive or a tree of sweet ripe figs etc. This might also be true of foods with high fat and salt. we might be programmed to eat them as often as we can, because genetically, we might think them uncommon.

Answer 2

there is no "i hate vegetables" gene. this question has nothing to do with natural selection because it does not greatly affect a humans ability to live. a few years or so of extra life is certainly not enough to cause any sort of natural selection. there are way to many other limiting factors with humans, just because you eat a lot of veggies, doesn't mean you don't smoke or tan (so that you may die from cancer sooner) also eating more fatty foods or preferring fruit over veggies, or hating veggies altogether doesn't mean the person doesn't work out and take care of themselves in other ways which might allow them to live longer than a veggie eater. natural selection is not playing any role here.

Answer 3

Eating fats and sweets doesn't keep humans from living plenty long to produce lots of offspring. We don't need to live to 60 or 70 to insure the survival of humans. In fact, it may, pre-agriculture, have been detrimental to survival since a bunch of old humans would have eaten so much there wouldn't be enough for youngsters to eat.

Fats and sweets have more calories so in the short term finding and eating unhealthy food would be benificial in times of shortages.

Humans aren't the only species to eat unhealthy food. Horses are notorious for over-eating grain to the point where they colic and founder and die from it.

Answer 4

It did, until recently. Today the people that like all the junk food are being kept alive by the overworked healthcare system, and therefore natural selection is being circumvented by technology.

Many people that are in poor health (due to poor diet) are not very fertile. But governments pay for free fertility treatments. Again natural selection is being circumvented by technology.

Answer 5

because the unhealthy food have the most fat and carbs and when we evovled, our bodies wanted to gain weight to live because people were just trying to gain weight to make it through the winter and weren't so concerned about health or being skinny
i mean, whats better, starving to death but being unhealthy (which i don't really think makes sense but i mean like not eating fats and too may carbs but lots of veggies and not getting enough calories) or being a bit unhealthy but not straving to death?