Reflection on natural selection

[hot_pastrami]

Sometimes when I deprive myself of sleep, a current is accidentally routed to a gaggle of rusty, neglected neurons in my brain, resulting in some peculiar random thoughts. These thoughts are often mistaken as keenly insightful or stimulatingly contemplative (wow, say that 10 times fast. Hell, say it one time fast). But on closer inspection, they are often betrayed to be the meaningless drivel they truly are.

This is one such thought, one which has lurked in my mind since it leaped at me from the shrubbery this morning. In my many months of reading posts at the Cellar, I've found that relative to other message boards, this place enjoys a generous helping of intellectual minds, so I thought some insight may well be found here.

Now, I'm not a humans-evolved-from-apes advocate, but it is blindingly obvious that natural selection does occur in all living things. From a purely scientific standpoint, my personal beliefs aside for a moment, my question is this: what purpose does the sense of taste serve? Or more to the point, why would natural selection favor that feature as it exists today? Think about it... healthy foods are frequently unpleasant to the palette, and foods which have little or no nutritional value are typically much tastier. Why wouldn't natural selection have favored those who had no sense of taste, or those who liked the taste of foods more beneficial to the eater's health?

Like I said, drivel. Wow, that was long.

Hot Pastrami