Discuss Evolutionary Explanations of Food Preference

In order to understand the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors we must understand the environment that they lived in. What is this?

What does natural selection do?

For most of our evolutionary history, where might we have lived?

What did the diets of early humans in hunter-gatherer societies include?

Why would preferences for fatty food have been adaptive for our ancestors?

What are modern humans more concerned with?

What do we eat instead?

What was different in the EEA in terms of calories?

Why did human ancestors include meat in their diets?

What does fossil evidence from groups of hunter-gatherers tell us about their daily diet?

What did a meat diet full of densely packed nutrients provide?

What did Milton (2008) claim?

What did meat provide the early humans with?

Are all food preferences a product of evolution?

What was important to our ancestors?

When was taste aversion (bait shyness) first discovered?

Who were the first to study taste aversion in a lab?

What did they find?

Not only taste but what else has been linked to illness and consequently to the development of a food aversion?

Why would the development of taste aversions have helped our ancestors to survive?

What other properties does taste aversion learning have that would have enhanced our survival in the EEA?

Once learned can it be forgotten?

What is the 'medicine effect'?

What did Garcia et al (1955) find?

Explaining taste aversion in humans, what did Seligman (1970) claim?

Why has natural selection of differential learning occurred?

What have scientists assumed about bitter taste?

Which study provides direct evidence in support of this hypothesis?

What did the participants do?

What are glucosinolates well known for?

What did those with the sensitive form of the bitter taste receptor gene rate the glucosinolate-containing vegetables?

What would confer a selective advantage on our ancestors, that would explain why such genes are widespread today.

What is a common way to test evolutionary hypotheses?

We cannot travel back to the EEA to see what adaptive problems were faced by our ancestors, so what can we do?

Alternatively what can we do?

Give an example.

What might a search for 'ultimate' causes in food preference mask?

Is there evidence from other primates to support our need for meats and fatty foods?

Are there cultural differences?

Give an example.

What can taste aversion not account for?

Is there a real world application?

What do some cancer treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy cause?

What did Bernstein and Webster (1980) do?

What did these findings result in?

This is consistent with an adaptive avoidance of unfamiliar foods known as?