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Bitterness is quite literally the "this is poison, stop eating" taste category that incidentally happens to have a lot of false positives because for the most part it's cheaper to reject some good food than to accept eating some poison. An ironic thing to say in a thread about peppers, but still.

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And much much more false negatives, which raises the question if the "stop eating this, this is bitter and bitter means poisonous" has any truth in it.

If bitter = poisonous, then the plants that evolve to be more bitter will be eaten less. Thus, non-poisonous foods that evolve to be more bitter have a genetic advantage over their less bitter counterparts.

That would be true if there were a fitness advantage for the plant when a herbivore dies, but in actually the fitness advantage comes from discouraging the herbivore from eating the plant.

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