Our evolution???

Reposted from Jay Parkinson -- an interesting thought about evolution.

Evolution typically works through environmental stressors. The environment becomes harsher, a gene mutates, and that gene propagates throughout the population because the mutant is actually better able to deal with the environment.

But what happens when the environment in which we live isn’t overly harsh, but overly productive? Our consumer culture over-produces and over-consumes. We have a huge excess of calories in everything, especially cheap sugars and fats.

Does this mean that genes that determine your level of self-control are now evolutionarily more advantageous? Is this massive amount of calories we can consume now an evolutionary stressor?

Is it now beneficial for the population of people to have a large number of individuals with strong self-control genes?