This morning, as I sliced a ripe banana into a pillowy bowl of fresh yogurt, I wasn't just indifferently throwing together another breakfast. I was tapping into a hunger that stretches back to the time before humans were even human. And those gnawing cravings that I get for cake and ice cream? They started rumbling 30 million years ago.
A recent study on our early anthropoid ancestors published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology offers compelling evidence on how we evolved to love soft, sweet foods — in particular the kind we could easily reach from our homes in the trees. Examining the dental evidence of early primates discovered in The Fayum Depression in the Western Desert of Egypt, researchers from New Zealand, Spain and the U.S. concluded that "Our ancestors took a long time to move away from a diet based on soft fruits," a predilection that may have in turn had an influence on everything from our ability to detect colors to our social behaviors. You can see the through line even now, in the way food companies know that we're still suckers for sweet and soft.
