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Ao2 - support or disport for having evolutionary basis.

Sweet food

Desor and steiner- found infants had a preference to sweet foods rather than sour. This was judged by facial expressions.

This shows that preferring sweet food is a innate preference meaning that response is due to nature in terms of genes- evolution rather than learning

Infants facial expression easily misinterpreted and unreliable. may not be showing a sweet preference.- fault in study.

As infants are too young to know preferences rules out extrenous variables like SL and environmental factors- gives findings greater validity.

LOUGE- more receptors for sweet tasting foods than any other taste. suggests sweet tastes has a preferred adaptive advantage.

If evolutionary all cultures would have a preference for sweet.

copper inuits- disgusted at the taste of sugar. against sweet and universal evolutuion.

Although- finding due to lack of exposure to sweet foods- from environment.

evolutionary desire for fats,salt and sugar. explain why fast food like hamburgers and pizza sell well. reflect evolved food preferences

However, fast food due to convenience and advertising.

meat preference- important source e of saturated fat and therefore energy.

Detecting toxins- bitter foods.

Bitter taste- defence mechanism to detect harmful toxins.

Real world application- research into taste aversion helps understand the food avoidance sometimes occur during treatment of cancer. Radiation and chemotherapy- gastrointestinal illness. can become paired with food consumption. leading to taste aversion.

gave patients novel tasting ice cream- prior to chemo. patients developed an aversion for that ice cream. findings have resulted in "scape goat" technique. give patients novel and familiar food, will become taste aversion to novel. relates to an adaptive avoidance of unfamiliar foods to aid survival. Body learns to avoid foods due to health risk.

Sandell- 35 adults for bitter taste receptor gene. participants rated bitterness of various veg. some contained glusonicates (toxic ^ doses) those with the sensitive gene rated gluosinolate veg 60% more bitter compared to those with insensitive gene.

supports evolutionary explanations for food avoidance as the ability to detect- selective advantage on ancestors explain why the bitter gene is wide spread today.

Ethical issues- patients being mildly poisoned.

Evidence- chimpanzees in Tanzania.face same problems that our ancestors did millions of years ago. starvation for most of the year- when they made a kill. go straight for the fattiest parts e.g brain. rather than the tender more nutritious flesh.

Highlights how our own behaviour in the EEA and supports how meat preference may have formed through lack of vegetation.

Can explain the nature side of food preference. weakness is it doesn't consider the nurture side of the nature vs nuture debate. Enviromental and cultural influences are ignored. deterministic. As assume genes control eating preference which is not the case. e.g people enjoy bitter foods, alcohol. ignores free will as people can use cognitive thoughts to choose food preference.