A craving for sweets may have helped set the stage for the evolution of the human brain. A new analysis of existing data from human ancestors, as well as chimps, suggests that a large proportion of that energy probably came from sugary foods like fruits and honey. A major part of the story of diet and human evolution revolves around meat-eating: Around 2.5 million years ago, our hominid ancestors began increasing their intake of animal food. “All these things kept adding pieces to this lovely tapestry, this puzzle that said fruit containing sugars must be important [in human evolution],” she says. A focus on meat-eating in the paleoanthropological record might have missed some of what is important in the evolution of human diets, agrees University of Oxford archaeologist Julie Lee-Thorp.