Ask anyone if they have a sweet tooth, and chances are the answer will be a strong “Yes!” Many people have a craving for sugary foods and drinks, so much so that they indulge in eating them to excess. This overconsumption of sugar on a regular basis has led to a host of negative consequences, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. That raises the question: if sugar can lead to such harmful health issues, why do most people love it so much? It’s a question that scientists have been studying for a while, and the answer to it can be traced back to our evolutionary roots.
As it turns out, although sugar is a health hazard today due to the large quantities we consume, our powerful desire for it comes from the substance’s beneficial6 side. Specifically, sugar’s benefits can be categorized8 in two ways. First, it provides us with calories, which give us energy. Second, sugar assists with the creation and retention of fat. Nowadays, it’s easy to become overweight, especially with so much tempting food available. However, our ancestors didn’t have it so easy.
For early humans, and the animals they evolved from, life was much more of a struggle, and finding a sufficient amount of food to survive was often a challenge. Moreover, there was far less sugary food in the environment. Most of the sugar humans ate at that time came from fruit and starchy vegetables such as carrots. Therefore, scientists believe it was a definite evolutionary advantage for animals and humans to enjoy sugary foods. This is because it gave them needed energy and the ability to store more fat to survive in difficult times, thereby allowing them to have more offspring and pass on their genes.
