Why Do Humans Crave Sugar So Much?

Why do humans crave sugar so much? It isn't just a lack of willpower. Babies love sweetness from their first hours of life, and part of your sweet tooth may come from a gene your ape ancestors lost about 15 million years ago, one that helped turn fruit sugar into fat. From newborn taste experiments and cats that can't taste sugar, to hummingbirds that rebuilt their sweet tooth, Hadza honey hunters and the honeyguide bird, bears fattening up for winter, the gut-brain sugar signal, and the truth about "sugar addiction," this is the evolutionary story of why sugar is so hard to resist. In this video: 0:00 Why do humans crave sugar? 0:20 You were born to love sugar 1:19 Sweet means energy 1:48 Did fruit shape your eyes? 2:29 Why cats can't taste sugar 3:06 The hummingbird's rebuilt sweet tooth 3:35 Sugar was rare in nature 4:05 Honey: the hunter-gatherer favorite 4:23 The bird that leads humans to honey 5:04 The lost gene that stores fat 7:01 Bears and the autumn switch 7:31 Your gut wants sugar too 8:17 Myth: sugar is as addictive as drugs 9:03 How much sugar we eat today 9:58 So why do humans crave sugar? This video is for education only and is not medical or nutrition advice. Sources: Steiner (1979), Advances in Child Development and Behavior — Human facial expressions in response to taste and smell stimulation Stevens et al. (2016), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews — Sucrose for analgesia in newborn infants undergoing painful procedures Osorio & Vorobyev (1996), Proceedings of the Royal Society B — Colour vision as an adaptation to frugivory in primates Li et al. (2005), PLoS Genetics — Pseudogenization of a sweet-receptor gene accounts for cats' indifference toward sugar Jiang et al. (2012), PNAS — Major taste loss in carnivorous mammals Baldwin et al. (2014), Science — Evolution of sweet taste perception in hummingbirds by transformation of the ancestral umami receptor Marlowe et al. (2014), Current Anthropology — Honey, Hadza, hunter-gatherers, and human evolution Spottiswoode, Begg & Begg (2016), Science — Reciprocal signaling in honeyguide-human mutualism Kratzer et al. (2014), PNAS — Evolutionary history and metabolic insights of ancient mammalian uricases Johnson (2022), Mariner Books — Nature Wants Us to Be Fat Rigano et al. (2017), Journal of Comparative Physiology B — Life in the fat lane: seasonal regulation of insulin sensitivity, food intake, and adipose biology in brown bears de Araujo et al. (2008), Neuron — Food reward in the absence of taste receptor signaling Tan et al. (2020), Nature — The gut–brain axis mediates sugar preference Westwater, Fletcher & Ziauddeen (2016), European Journal of Nutrition — Sugar addiction: the state of the science Mintz (1985), Viking — Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History American Heart Association — Added Sugars Cave Logic explains why you're still wired for the Stone Age. New videos three times a week. Subscribe if you've ever wondered why humans are like this. #Sugar #HumanEvolution #CaveLogic