This reality carries great importance in the nutrition department: we eat many foods just because they exist. We fail to question the substances we consume. Here, Ronald Reagan's signature phrase, "Trust but Verify," could help. When assessing the foods we consume, sure, we can trust nutrition 'experts' on some level -- we have a society built on experts, after all -- but, on the back end, we can simultaneously verify the validity of these recommendations (avoid the Food Pyramid like the plague, by the way). And, ultimately, many times we must simply perform our own self-experiments -- engaging our biomolecular individualities in the process -- to discover how best to fuel our physiologies.
In the case of bad carbs, I suspect that we consume many foods and drinks, in part, simply because they exist. From Vitamin Water (also known as 'sugar water') to chips, humans in our modern environments have grown accustomed to consuming foods without questioning their heritages, origins, or 'reasons for being' in our diets. When a society built on experts mixes with the curious, exploratory nature of human psychology, people will eat and drink products just because Lebron James and Kobe Bryant endorse them on national television during the NBA Playoffs, for instance. "Look at Lebron; he drinks Vitamin Water; he's super fit; ergo, Vitamin Water must be healthy -- after all, it has 'vitamins'. Interestingly, a parallel problem emerged in the creation of wildly complex financial instruments that we did not understand nor comprehend, and our financial system blew up as a result. Some 'expert', somewhere, created a new investment product and some curious humans listened to him narrate about its benefits. It's the salesman dilemma.
Beyond diet, in human relationships, people have lots of options -- someone may quip, "I can do what I want," when confronted about a harmful act he commited against another person -- but just because we can do something, does not mean we should do it. It's reflective self-control. Just because I can go to the grocery store and buy chips and soda does not mean I should do it. Just because I can lie to a friend about why I did not show up to our scheduled meeting, does not mean I should do it. It's a human psychology paradigm: just because it exists, doesn't mean it is good for us.
Ancestral Fitness anecdote: Surely, a 'caveman' would have picked up a starchy potato off of the ground and ate it (prepared it first) -- I don't know the answer definitively; time-scale dictates the reply -- but that does not mean eating potatoes is good for us.
"If you build it, they will come."
