7 October 1998

As I ponder various social issues, one of the first things I keep in mind is that people are animals and that they evolved over a long period. This might seem obvious, but there is a tendency to overlook this fact. One example that springs to mind is a fairly trivial thing, but one that illustrates the principle. Consider the way that many men look at an attractive woman whom they do not know. Many women say that they are offended by the way men they do not know look at them. They want men to appreciate them not only for their appearance, but also for their other fine qualities such as intelligence, nurturing, compassion, etc.

In some cases the behavior of men watching women they do not know is rather outrageous. More refined men, however, do not whistle and make suggestive remarks and gestures. In such circumstances these women might be largely projecting their own feelings. In either case, there is an element of truth to the thought that when men are observing women they do not know well they can only go by the external appearances, especially when they are not interacting socially. Even then, however, our reactions are at least partly governed by forces we often do not even realize are at work. 

It would be well to remember that our present species and its culture have evolved over many generations. For the vast part of this history we did not have the language or culture to even formulate thoughts about attributes such as nurturing, intelligence, etc. During this period, however, we had to make choices about mates. These choices were made based on inputs that we are most likely not even aware of, although lately some researchers have begun to discover some of the factors we have been using. Certainly physical characteristics have given us clues about the ability of a potential spouse to survive, prosper, and produce healthy children. No doubt we have come to think of these characteristics as beauty and sexual attraction. Such things as symmetry, cleanliness, lack of scaring, wide hips, large breasts and so forth were desirable because they were the clues that our ancestors used to evaluate potential spouses. Over the many generations, the men who paid attention to these factors generally prospered and reproduced while men who didn't have tended to disappear from the gene pool.

Therefore, women who perceive that men are judging them on such superficial aspects as beauty and sexual appearance rather than on higher standards are missing the point. They are exactly right much of the time, but this is a desirable thing, not a bad thing. Once a man gets to know a woman he will begin to evaluate her on these other traits, but his initial reaction is built into him by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and he is here today because of it, so to ignore his first instinctive animal response would be irrational.

As another example, consider the evolution of eating habits. For most of our evolution our ancestors were in such circumstances that we had trouble finding enough to eat. Before the development of language skills each of us had to largely learn what to eat based on our own experience. Those of us who ate things that were high in calories survived more often to breed offspring than those who didn't. (To be sure, other things are important in diets, but calories are so important that they largely overwhelm everything else.)

Therefore, some of us developed the ability to sense what things were good for us and what things were likely to be bad for us. In particular, our sense of taste only senses four things: sweet, salt, and the two extremes of the pH scale, sour (acid) and bitter (base). The rest of our sense of what is desirable in food comes from our nose, a much more complex chemical organ. Working with the mouth, we have the ability to detect foods that are high in fats. That is why a steak marbled with fat "tastes" better than a very lean cut.

Unfortunately, today we do not have any problem getting all the calories we need and then some. Even a person working at a minimum wage can afford to eat many too many calories. The problem is that our evolution has not caught up with this fact. We still crave foods that are high in sweetness, salt and fat. Furthermore, with most of the really heavy work being done with machines, most of us do not get much exercise in our regular employment. As a result, today the average U.S. citizen is very much overweight. When I was growing up, the sight of a really obese person was rare. Now it is not at all uncommon. I work today in an office building where maybe 1,000 other people work. I would guess that there are 2-3 really obese persons (say over 300 lbs.) on each floor.

It would be fine just to say to these people that they are endangering their own health and that they look terrible, but this would ignore the evolution I am talking about. People crave sweet foods and fat foods and such foods are readily available to them. Naturally, the people who sell food understand that these attributes help them sell more food, so they load up the food they sell with sugar and fat. It would be nice if the vendors would realize that they are exacerbating the problem, but since this would go against why they are in business in the first place it is probably unlikely to happen.

As an interesting sidelight on this problem, in the last 50 years or so there has been a movement to develop substances that simulate one of these characteristics but has no caloric value. There have been a number of such substances developed. For sugar substitutes there has been one available in the market for years and several others have been released in the last decade or so. The first fat substitute is now available, and foods containing it are now appearing. I have not tried any yet. If it is like most other new food products, the first versions will be marginally acceptable but later refinements in processing will product more palatable products. Food vendors have begun marketing such products, calling them "light" or "lite". One can hope that this trend continues.

Another sidelight - researchers have begun to discover that some fats more healthy than others. Many people have a concern that the level of fat in their diet is too high and want to limit the types that they eat. The major item of discussion today is the ratio of high density lipoprotein (HDL, considered desirable) to low density lipoprotein (LDL, considered bad). Naturally occurring oils have different ratios, and Canola oil is considered to be more desirable, for example. That is about all we know about it today, but at least some of us are beginning to be concerned about such things.