Taste buds are cultivated by devious means.

I wish I knew but My 2 y/o son loves Mc donalds, ice cream, candy, and the such. I don't think its cultural at that stage.

your body will crave what it needs, we lazy modern humans just overindulge. The Amish don't eat 'healthy' and hardly ever suffer from high chol. or heart diesase or obesity, they do walk an avergae of 10,000 steps per day

The more starch we eat the more the body craves it, so I presume it is very similar with other food groups

I think we crave foods that make us gain weight. It's a survival mechanism, leftover from times when having extra body weight could save our lives during periods of time when we didn't have access to food.

All the animals are unwilling recruits in the scientific quest to understand appetite, a fundamental human drive whose complexities have long frustrated researchers and dieters alike. Craving and bingeing are anomalies in rodents, but they're common in people. Studies of eating behavior show that most men and women go on occasional eating binges and experience food cravings that feel overwhelming. Such findings should come as no surprise; eating is more important to an individual's survival than even sex, and it's in everybody's interest to make sure the urge to consume stays strong. If you're one of the millions trying to lose weight or lower your cholesterol, you know firsthand just how powerful a force appetite can be. In this land of plenty, where there's little chance of starving, our appetites have become downright dangerous. So researchers are studying rat junkies—and human subjects, too—in the hopes that a deeper understanding of appetite will yield strategies to obstruct it. The studies explore psychology as well as physiology because, as every dieter knows, appetite afflicts the mind as much as the body. Hunger and craving may originate in the flesh, but they manifest in that zone of consciousness where want and need are easily confused. To clarify the difference, it helps to distinguish between "brain hunger"—the mind's desire to eat for pleasure—and "stomach hunger"—the body's demand to eat for energy.

Come on now...Think about what it was we were eating back in the 1800's or any century for that matter...It all depends on what is available to us at that certain place in time, we just happen to live in an era of fast food, high starches, sweets, canned food for crying out loud and then you mix all of that with our life styles and the census on that is we think fast and move fast so we need fast, which translates into food we can eat on the go, which further translates into bad eating habits...That's my story and I am sticking to it LOL

i just read a magazine article today that said if a woman eats a high fat diet while pregnant, her child will grow up to have a big appetite and crave fatty foods, and consequently weigh more than they should. I'll write more when i find the magazine...there was an explanation I don't remember.