Evolutionary Dead-Ends and Hot Sauce

Gluttony: It's as American as that apple pie you're stuffing your face with.

Over the 4th of July weekend, one finds food-related programming across the dial, not just on Food Network. Many programs focus on food festivals across the country: lobsterfests in New England, barbecue extravaganzas in the South, chili cookoffs throughout the land.

Several shows revolve around challenges--not just cooking challenges, either. In addition to the famous hot dog eating contest in Coney Island--a major sporting event that gets the full ESPN treatment, there is "Man vs. Food," a staple of the Travel Channel. On this show, the portly Adam Richman treks from city to city, accepting restaurant challenges along the way: a six-pound burrito in Vegas, eight 3-pound omelets in Denver--you get the idea. Several of Adam's challenges involve not just size but strength--intestinal fortitude, if you will. He often must not only eat large quantities of some foodstuff, but said foodstuff must also contain enough capsacin to qualify as illegal under the Geneva conventions.

Which brings us to Darwin.

We imagine that a chili-pepper biologist (they must exist), would explain the capsacin content of chili peppers as a product of natural selection: The spicier a pepper, the less likely it is to be eaten by wild animals: After a leopard takes one ill-informed bite of a Guatemalan insanity pepper, he is unlikely to repeat the experiment.

What, then, does it say about humankind that we see this sort of defense mechanism as a challenge--as a dare? Does this represent a flaw in Darwinism? The theory of "survival of the fittest" crumbles in the face of a species too dumb to know when it is best to avoid what causes it pain.

When you think about it, "Man Vs. Food" goes a long way towards explaining everything from nuclear weapons to people who text while driving.