[perfectritone]

I'm left curious as to why our taste receptors are so attuned to sweetness if high sugar foods weren't historically correlated with being high in energy.

[lemax]

Perhaps because the high sugar foods that occur in nature contain nutrients we don't get elsewhere and help us fight disease. These sugars are also naturally packaged in a way that makes them behave quite unlike added sugars, they don't lead to the same insulin spikes or high blood pressure, and consuming fruits like berries alongside more processed, artificially sweetened foods can even reduce the insulin spikes of those foods.

https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/what-about-all-the-sugar-in-...

[gpsx]

I have thoughts about that, but IANAN (nutritionalist). Not all energy is the same, as in fructose (in sucrose, which we sense as sweeter) versus glucose (what composes carbs, and also in sucrose), two simple sugars. Glucose goes more directly into the bloodsteam during digestion. Fructose does not go straight to the bloodstream but is processed by the liver. Although it gets into the bloodstream slower, it gets stored by the liver faster, and we use this as an energey resevoir when we are not getting energy directly thorugh digestion. So maybe we crave this somtimes when we need to rebuild our energy stores. Or at least it seems that way for me. I crave sugar/fruit sometimes, particularly after exercising. I don't generally even eat sweets/desserts, so my body apparently isn't fooled into always wanting sugar. I would guess from my experience sugar plays a specific role and I want it at a certain time and not others.

Incidently, I get a headache when I eat processed sugar, but not fruit. (However, fruit will also give me a headache if I carmelize it, cooking it at a high temperature for a long time.) Anyway that is one reason I avoid sweetened foods and maybe why I don't get sucked into eating sugar all the time. And people think I am trying to be super healthy...

[gwern]

The references he gives in that section suggest that it boils down to a convenient way to try to gauge poison by contrasting sugars to bitterer phytochemicals. Plants with sugar may be less nutritious on average, but that's just counting calories/macronutrients, not taking into account poisonous substances.

[koromak]

1) Its still very, very high in energy. We're built to use it. 2) Fruits contain all sorts of good vitamins and minerals along with sugar. Two birds with one stone. 3) I don't know if we are any less "attuned" to it than fat or protein. Most people would eat a good steak over a bag of candy.

[Sesse__]

If nothing else: It's certainly useful that mother's milk tastes good to babies. Imagine what an evolutionary disadvantage it would be if it tasted bitter.

[arde]

To make it explicit for those who haven't tasted it, mother's milk tastes distinctly sweet (literally), in a way cow milk does not.

So yeah, there's a probable purpose for sweet receptors. An interesting question is whether seeking sweet foods in modern adult life, which would probably not have been available in our evolution, guides us to a healthy diet.

[hoseja]

Is everybody forgetting about fruit or what. There totally is wild fruit that is very sweet.

[paulpauper]

They are high in energy. carbs used by muscles for energy first over protein and fat