An obvious example would be the phenomenon of alcohol, whats so appealing about the waste products of single celled fungi that isn't also fascinating about the waste products of any other organism. There is a reason why fecal matter isn't considered a delicacy, so why is alcohol?
Speaking of delicacies, I'm sure you've all see this fella before:
The pufferfish, very, very toxic and yet its a Japanese Delicacy, the meat is supposed to have a slight spicy taste, which is actually the taste of its poison. Even when properly prepared so the poison glands are removed, the meat of the puffer fish contains traces of poison, and its this that gives it the unique taste, oh and also it blocks your sodium channels causing havoc with your nervous system, but hey that's all part of the fun right? Nothing like a dose of neurotoxin to start the day!
Spicy huh? Yes that brings us on to peppers... Why? Just why? Peppers, garlic, onions, mustard and countless other plants have developed chemicals to prevent animals form being foolish enough to eat them, chemicals designed to mess with their minds, cause neurons to fire telling the brain that its receiving heat, damaging their eyes... The list goes on. But now we, as humans, have unanimously decided that we want to eat these things exactly for the taste of their defence mechanisms!
But at least these things are all natural, after all its not as if we've gone out of our way to produce drinking acid or anything right?
What is wrong with our species?
6 comments:
You must have a boring diet
Boring diet? Well, she is British.
More to the point I'm a student!
Pasta, pasta, soup and pasta, thats what I run on right now!
I wasn't trying to exclude myself from our races stupidity, I'm just curious how we evolved to enjoy poisons, really quite a strange situation!
Although I really don't understand why some people like the really really hot peppers, to the extent that we are selectively breeding them to become more and more potent.
There's something hard-wired in our brain, I beleive, that drives us to expand our knowledge and experience into danger.
Modern society doesn't have the ever-present risk of being eaten by a mammoth, but we might perhaps be evolved to be on alert for such things. Since the daily risk-factor is gone, we unconsciously look for risk-reward behaviors within the current society.
It's the same reason I think people with "good lives" (jobs, homes, etc) are much more prone to Drama than those honestly destitute and struggling. The well-off have less real problems so tend to create them just to get a "high" of endorphins.
..or something. :)
Hmm, I sense a thesis topic here I'll avoid for now...
You have to admit that it's somewhat like asking "why do people enjoy sex that fails to end in fertilization?" -- you must be failing to take into account some seriously important variable.
Also, one of the ways to incapacitate an organism is via intense pleasure.
I don't really think its related to recreational sex (as opposed to reproductive sex), since sex is an obvious thing to be enjoyable, if it was possible to die by having too much sex (quite possible, but probably through exhaustion... or deviancy)then I'd see the connection.
The point is that these chemicals are bad for you and yet we enjoy consuming them, in fact many of them are fatal in sufficient quantities, yet in small quantities can be really rather pleasurable.
Perhaps it is a kind of masochism that humans have evolved into, where our pleasure senses are simlar enough to our pain receptors that one can be mistaken for another under certain stimulation, the point really is that I don't fully know.
Maebius definately has a point about flight or fight in modern society, our bodies aren't designed to cope with stress when it comes in documant form, you can't run away from a maths problem, and you can'tfight the peice of paper (heres a hint if your really stressed with something, do a quick bit of exercise, helps clear you up!).
However I don't think this is the same as the food issue, which seems universal between rich and poor... everyone likes a curry!
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