Science of Parenthood Part 1: Darwinian Lunch

Darwin gave us one of the most important, and perhaps most misunderstood theories in science: The theory of evolution by natural selection. What many people don't know is that this theory is actually a generalized form of an earlier theory of Darwin's: The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection Of my Child's Lunch (hereafter TENSOCL).

One of the most historically contentious phrases that arose from Darwin's theory was 'the survival of the fittest'. The term 'fittest' has wide ranging biological interpretations, but in it's original use, it actually meant 'the food that was the most healthy'. This is a keystone to understanding the theory of TENSOCL. Imagine if you will, a child's lunch with a random assortment of foods. If the selection is broad enough, the child will 'naturally select' the marshmallows first, and then the gummy bears second, leaving the broccoli and quinoa and other 'fitter' foods to survive the lunch. Given the strong selective pressures of the child to 'naturally select' the most un-fit foods first, only the 'fittest' foods survive. Scientists have verified this empirically by looking in their children’s lunch boxes after school and seeing the only remnants of the midday meal are the baby carrots and the celery sticks (curiously the peanut butter was gone though). Given the strong behavioral tendency to nurturing, and perhaps more importantly, the aversion to the state of low blood sugar in children, parents quickly identify which foods their child will eat and over time, we can start to see the lunches 'evolving'. A parent might start out feeding their child little jars of mushed peas and carrots, blissfully naive that the very fitness of the foods has predetermined their destiny, and then given a few short years that very same parent will be cheerily delivering cream cheese coffee cake and mountain dew for the sustainence of their child. Of course the predation pressure imposed by hungry children on un-fit foods is not without consequence, marshmallows are almost extinct in the wild and the only twinkies that remain are preserved specimens on the shelves of museums. Today we find ourselves in a world where kale is growing out of every crack in my driveway with no natural predators to check it’s population explosion. We are facing a new epoch, where refined sugar plays the role of the dinosaur and children are the asteroid.