Extreme Cuisine: Why do we like fatty foods so much? asks Haydn Shaughnessy
To the question: "How far would you walk to pick up a lettuce?" most people would answer: "Not so I'd get sore feet anyway."
If we were talking roast meat or a casserole or a bag of chips, instead of an iceberg, the chances are we would indeed expend considerable amounts of energy to get at it, and for centuries many people expended a week's worth of energy, and endured considerable social misery, to get a decent meal.
If we're programmed to seek out and kill for succulent, fatty food that is scarce, we are now witnessing what happens when the scarce becomes abundant. But instead of reacting with moral repugnance to obesity we'd do well to understand ourselves better.
We humans intuitively operate a food energy accounting system that tells us there is no point in expending our stored energy to gain low-energy, tasteless food.
Our accounting persuades us to make sacrifices for high energy fats.
Those two features are, say some scientists, related.
Low energy equates with dull. High energy is yummy.
Hence the dangers of obesity are, unfortunately, rationalised instinctively in our bodies as the sheer pleasure of eating fat in inappropriate quantities.
Zoologist James Kirkwood explained to me recently how this dietary accounting process arose in our evolutionary past.
Evolution created in us a preference for high-energy foods, specifically for fats, because the human body is capable of storing them through times of scarcity.
Fats taste great for a reason: to attract us to the one food we can store.
Loren Cordain, a diet researcher, goes further and says we have specifically evolved to choose parts of an animal's body, or of a plant, that is high in essential fats.
Prof Kirkwood, who is the chief executive and scientific director of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare in the UK, adds a caveat: "The daily energy intake of humans and many other omnivorous, mono-gastric, mammals may be higher when offered ad libitum access to highly palatable and varied diets than if offered less palatable foods."
In other words for our bodies to work properly, for our energy-effort account to function, we need high-energy foods to be scarce and difficult to obtain and, at the same time, we need those foods to be immensely attractive, even addictive, to us.
In reality we have an abundance of all that we should expend huge energy acquiring and nature has created in us the compulsive, obsessive need to eat it.
Fats taste, fats add taste to other dishes, and they are succulent in themselves.
But isn't Black Forest gateau also immensely tasty?
Indeed. And Mr Cro-Magnon would have loved it too.
I write this article huddled over a pack of chocolate digestives undecided whether to add a sausage to tonight's vegetarian cassoulet or to rip through the packet of biscuits now.
I am, the professor's work assures me, acting quite logically and in perfect harmony with my natural inclinations. That's why dieting is so counter-productive. I am drawn to the wrong foods for the right reasons.
The effort and energy budgets that drive our metabolisms are more precipitously balanced than we might realise. In some species the balance tips in the direction of a purely leisurely existence. Foliage loving giant pandas can barely afford to take a stroll up an incline, quite a drawback when you live in the mountains of China. Their energy budget is finely balanced between territorial protection, such a chore, courtship (your move, dearie), passing waste, and foraging. Decisions about where to forage are critical to all the other chores. Too much effort in finding food makes survival less likely.
The same mechanism is at work in us. Arguably humans need to learn to love their fat before dispensing with it. As an energy source it allowed us to continue hunting, courting and reproducing through times of scarcity.
Historically, if all the goodies we needed were always available our metabolism would operate differently.
"We might also have evolved stricter mechanisms for preventing us from eating more than necessary for maintenance," writes Prof Kirkwood, "i.e. to maintain weight without gaining or losing any, because there would be no advantage in gaining weight but there would be possible disadvantages (e.g. in speed and agility to escape predators)."
What we have then are bodies that aren't programmed for moderation but lifestyle aspirations that are intolerant of the consequences of excess.
Leading a longer and healthier life made up of hour-long sessions in the gym every day, however, is as bad as eating your meat with sprouts every evening. The conversation we are not having about diet is how we can set challenging lifestyles for people.
Two shorts in this month's extreme cuisine. Pukka, a tea maker new to Ireland has introduced a Rose petal tea. Rose petals have a cooling effect on the body and taste great. Get them from health food stores.
Finally I've been experimenting with a breakfast that places few demands on the digestion. Miso barley soup, buckwheat noodles (which are of course not wheat at all but a member of the rhubarb family) and coriander.
Soak a bunch of coriander in a bowl of water and fermented vinegar (just a dash) for 20 minutes. Meanwhile bring water to boil for a handful of buckwheat noodles. Simmer for seven minutes and wash thoroughly in cold water. Place in soup. Drain and chop coriander (or parsley) and add as you eat. A little sauerkraut sours the taste.