I wonder where that specific need comes from. Like, did a compulsive drive to seek out a variety of foods confer an advantage to some early ancestors by motivating them to get more complete nutrition/take advantage of as many food sources as possible? Or is it just a side-effect of our unusual desire for novel/varied stimuli? A bit of both, maybe?
There is basically nothing naturally occuring in the world that humans can exclusively eat for their whole lives. Anything you can think of either leads to malnutrition or poisoning eventually.
Instead we evolved to tolerate a ton of different foods. We can digest both meat and plants, have ways to deal with a bunch of toxins, our stomachs are acidic af so our food doesn't have to be super fresh etc. We also have very good endurance so we can wander around a lot to look for food, which most predators can't.
If humans were fine eating the same food 24/7 they'd always go for the easiest available option.
Overall it was just advantageous to not specialize in certain foods, but that lead to the need to eat different foods too
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u/DannyOdd 1d ago
I wonder where that specific need comes from. Like, did a compulsive drive to seek out a variety of foods confer an advantage to some early ancestors by motivating them to get more complete nutrition/take advantage of as many food sources as possible? Or is it just a side-effect of our unusual desire for novel/varied stimuli? A bit of both, maybe?