Earlier fruits didn't have anywhere near the sugar content of the cultivated ones today. In fact, many fruits of old were inedible (e.g. apples).

Sources of sugar such as sweet fruits and honey were rare delicacies, not daily occurrences.

Humans in various regions would have adapted over 1000 generations to better match their environment.

We live in a VERY different world now.

This is a myth. I think 10,000 years ago there were only 2 million humans walking the earth. Fruit trees growing on uninhabited islands today have delicious sweet mangos. Fruits which exist but have never been cultivated at scale are also deliciously sweet.

yea just come to Borneo and try some of the native fruits to see how wrong that myth is ;)

While I'm sure not everyone had access to sweet fruit all the time, are you sure it was really so rare?

Fruit is meant to be eaten, so as long as plants have the spare energy, I don't see why they wouldn't make lots of appealing fruit.

Veggies would make more sense to be bitter.

Also, where did you get 1000 generations from? That's 20000 years in one place. It seems like a lot of humans would be a lot more mobile than that.

> Fruit is meant to be eaten

Meant by who? Evolution don't give a fuck...

I thought the whole evolutionary advantage was that animals spread the seeds around after eating the fruit, making survival much more likely. So not 'meant to be eaten' as in intentional choices, but meant to be eaten as in - this is why its an evolutionary advantage.

By the plant. The plant that is driven by its genes to maximize its offspring.

Can you cite some sources please? I've tasted some very sweet wild berries.

here is some info refuting that often parroted myth:

1. https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1149968041964396545

2. https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

And I had some very sour apples so I think our anecdata cancel each other.

The existance of fruit that isn't sweet is not a counter example to the fact that sweet fruit exists at all

In addition to things other folks have said: Honey has existed for quite some time, because bees have existed for quite some time. Honey is pretty full of sugary goodness.

> Earlier fruits didn't have anywhere near the sugar content of the cultivated ones today

This is not substantiated[1][2]

1. https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1149968041964396545

2. https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

Or did plants evolve colored fruit because the plants with colored fruit were recognized most easily and thus spread the most by animals (including humans)?

My impression was that was just a theory based on the assumption that fruit was worth evolving to eat. It could be a happy accidental source with calories; or it could have been a great source of calories that was the best option at the time, but is no longer.

Fruit comes with fiberand vitamins. I suspect that's the real difference.

Not starving >> slight brain fog

The fruit we have today is so much higher in sugar than back in times when the vision evolved.