The Meating Game

I just took out a book from college, How The Mind Works by Stephen Pinker, one of the first books that got me into reading about evolutionary psychology. It was one of my favorite classes in college and also where I met two terrific friends, Shannon and Eric.

Anyway, a paragraph from the book as it relates to food (and sex):

In all foraging societies, presumably including our ancestors', hunting is overwhelmingly a male activity. Women are encumbered with children, which makes hunting inconvenient, and men are bigger and more adept at killing because of their evolutionary history of killing each other. As a result, males can invest surplus meat in their children by provisioning the children's pregnant or nursing mothers. They also can trade meat with females for plant foods or for sex. Brazen bartering of the carnal for the carnal has been observed in baboons and chimpanzees and is common in foraging peoples. Though people in modern societies are ever-so-more discreet, an exchange of resources for sexual access is still an important part of the interactions between men and women all over the world (...) In any case, we have not lost the association completely. Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior advises:
"There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection is the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted."