Sugar craving is an evolutionary desirable made unnecessary in the Space Age

Prehistoric man developed the 'Sweet tooth'. This craving for basic sugar was fundamentally an adaptation to a once limited food source of rapid energy: an original fast food.


Sugar overload is actually toxic to our bodies. 
Our ancestors subsequently developed a way to manage that by the conversion of excessive sugar to fat.


The modern problem is that a once scarce food source is abundant in eye-popping quantities, and once succumbing to the inherent desires for sugars then the obesity 'epidemic' can be readily viewed as an inevitable outcome to agriculture & availability.

Dan Lieberman is an Evolutionary Biology Professor at Harvard, & comments on New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's recent ban on supersized sodas & sweet drinks of 16 ounces or more.

Whilst detailing our ancestoral drive for the sweet stuff for dietary sustenance, Lieberman also establishes that the New York situation could be one repeated for a number of foodstuffs if taken in excessive quantities such as fried foods or pizzas.

Key to his reasoned article in the New York Times (NY Times article in full) is the fact that children cannot be expected to make good choices & require guiding similar to the assistance offered to them regarding cigarettes and alcohol. 

Rather than just setting himself up to be targeted by an aggrieved overweight adult population, the trick for Bloomberg and wider society may be to get the educative message across to the children,and head off the next generation careering towards this obesity epidemic before it is a case of being too little too late.

Evolutionists might suggest our ancestors admire the caring actions to the wider society: similar to what hunter-gatherers achieved millenia ago in a time before Super Big Gulp.