Does “food boredom” help protect against nutrient deficiency?

Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.

Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.

If I fed you the same diet of these, then continued feeding will result in a deficiency or imbalance.

I get the impression that this "food boredom acts to reduce "lopsided" gorging, why does it kick in for balanced diets, too? My explanation is that complete, fully balanced diets, too? My explanation is that complete, fully balanced diets do not occur as "windfalls" in the natural world, and thus there is no reason for the body to make an exception.

Other animals at the middle trophic levels will of course exhibit the same food day after day, it is probably losing out on other, more challenging food opportunities that would lead to a balanced diet. By becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the easy food, the cravings are specifically suppressed and redirected elsewhere. Other food sources become much more appealing, even ones that are much less attainable.

I get the impression that this "food boredom acts to reduce "lopsided" gorging, why does it kick in for balanced diets, too? My explanation is that complete, fully balanced diets, too? My explanation is that complete, fully balanced diets do not occur as "windfalls" in the natural world, and thus there is no reason for the body to make an exception.

I get the impression that this "food boredom" phenomenon occurs in every culture, which would indicate a genetic rather than cultural basis. But what evolutionary advantage could there be to rejecting a perfectly healthy meal, just because it's the same one you had yesterday?

Consider a typical omnivore, or any other creature that eats a highly variable diet. It forages (and maybe hunts), but isn't guaranteed to find any one type of food. Food may appear suddenly in large quantities (a full apple tree produces a windfall, a deer is hit by a car), and at those times the animal forgoes normal foraging behavior.

So if food boredom acts to reduce "lopsided" gorging, why does it kick in for balanced diets do not occur as "windfalls" in the natural world, and thus there is no reason for the body to make an exception.

So if food boredom acts to reduce "lopsided" gorging, why does it kick in for balanced diets, too? My explanation is that complete, fully balanced diets do not occur as "windfalls" in the natural world, and thus there is no reason for the body to make an exception.

I get the im

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