Why do we like candy?

I think we like candy because its sweet and we were evolved to like sweet things because fruits and other stuff we eat that taste sweet (or atleast used to eat long long time ago) contain vitamins and other stuff we need to survive.

I believe this is true for all our likings/dislikings like the cold:
Most people don't like when it is cold and thats normal because if it gets too cold it could be bad for your health and even life threatening.
Yet, most of the time when we experience cold we are far from a life-threatening situation.
Yet our brain is giving us a warning to get out of the cold as fast as possible.

These stimulations that were evolved to help us survive can turn out having the opposite effect like for example getting addicted to a drug and dying from an OD.

Evolution is a very slow process that takes a lot of time to correct its mistakes and adjust to the ever changing situation (lately very fast because of technology).

Luckily for us we know eating too much candy can be bad for our health in numerous different ways and that - even though we might feel lazy - its important to exercise.

How do we know this?
Because we as humans were evolved to think about that stuff!


Conclusion:
Seeing as we are growing more numerous every day and our way of living (ie. situation) is changing at a mind-blowing rate because of all our inventions and technology, there is no way the slow method of adjusting called evolution will keep up with the changes.
Therefor we need to become even more conscious of our way of living, how our body works and all that new technology that is changing our lives so that we can adjust to it.

Calling candy sweet doesn't describe it beyond the fact that it falls into the group of foods that interact with our taste buds to produce a sensation of sweetness. Why did our taste buds evolve to perceive certain molecules (monosaccharides, disaccharides, and others) as sweet?

thank you, that is exactly what I was trying to communicate with "candy" but I couldn't find the right words (english is not my native language)

If only we could instantly understand other peoples ideas as we understand our own we wouldn't need language

this must be a level

Perhaps sweetness is only the sensation once perceives when stimulating the specific areas of our brain that turn on the mesolimbic area (ie the dopaminergic neurons of the VTA/nucleus accumbens/hypothalamus/amygdala). Do individuals with lesions in these areas experience aguiesia to "sweet" things?

very interesting stuff to think about op

I like Candy as well. She wants something more than sex, but I don't like her THAT much.

Seriously, though, it probably has to do with our brain using up glycogen, and candy is an immediate source of that. It's just sweets in general, not specifically candy. I hate candy - bad for the teeth.

Sugars, fats, and starches have high energy density and energy efficiency. I would expect vitamins to be more closely related to cravings than to our general food preferences.

This reads like a paper written for a class.

I think in the future, we may end up creating technology that adapts to us. I don't think we have it in us to adapt to our technology, so we're ****ed if we can't do it the other way around.

I agree with madnak. I think "unhealthy" foods are so tasty and desirable because our bodies are evolved to survive in a world without farms and supermarkets, where meals could be few and far between, and the more calories you could get at once the better.