Hi Keith
I don't know if you are familiar with Aboriginal wild foods but not too many
of them are sweet as we are used to. I think we develloped a taste for
sweetness due to the lack of sweet things in the environment. Occasionally
there were very sweet things eg bush honey but on the whole not many. Also
it seems rare to find large sweet fruits (I'm talking about Australia here)
although there are a few small sweet ones eg native cherry. The pigmy have
a lower sensitivity to sugar compared to surrounding populations outside the
rainforest. When one considers that fruits in savanna environments are
lower in sugars than rainforest fruits, heightened taste sensitivity makes
sense in terms of finding high energy resources. IIRC there is a fruit in
the pigmy rainforest that weighs 5 kg which is fairly unusual.
Sean
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