Hungry? Why?

[Carrot Top]

All of a sudden an urge arises.

In your stomach, on your tongue, in your mind, maybe even in your heart.

This urge to eat something (or alternately to dine. I am not being exclusive here. ) - where does it come from, for you, personally?

Is it always at a certain time of day - a handy reminder of the biological clock that the body requires nourishment?

Does it happen because it is "supposed to be" mealtime?

Could it be roused, then to be indulged, by the whiff of a passing scent of coffee brewing, or bread baking, or savory onions hitting the grill?

Are you made hungry by the idea that by putting certain healthy things into your system in certain measured amounts you thereby have a "system" for physical maintenance?

Might the cause be visual images or even ideas of recipes that have wandered into your mind of the lovely things that could be dined upon or eaten?

Does hunger happen more for you at times of accomplishment, or does it sometimes strike at times of loss or pain or confusion or boredom?

Where does your own personal hunger come from? What is the spark?

[Verjuice]

Where does your own personal hunger come from? What is the spark?

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eGullet. First and foremost, as it turns out.

[Sugarella]

I believe that the hunger pangs felt in your stomach are actually a chemical trick of your brain, trying to get you to give it the vitamins and minerals the brain and body systems need at the time. Since we absorb the majority of nutrients from our food so quickly (well before our stomach is finished disgesting, actually), coupled with the fact that people who eat poorly tend to be hungry more, snack more, and get into poor shape, whereas healthier eaters can eat smaller portions of healthier food less often and be satisfied, this seems to make a lot of sense.

I don't think that's all of it though. A good part is psychological too. The fact that smells of cooking food, memories of events, extreme emotional situations, or merely the suggestion of going to eat a good meal can trigger hunger indicates we can be physiologically inclined to eat and store nutrients when the brain and body systems aren't actually in need of them.

I guess we're just built to be eating machines, basically. Interesting topic.

[naguere]

Do people wait for hunger pangs? I wonder, nowadays, just how many people are actually hungry when they take their next meal. I am not talking about third world here.

[Pan]

Good point.

But there's a lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling you can get without hunger pangs.

[KARENR65]

I just recently began a diet and one of the things that I was going to try and do is eat when I am hungry - instead of 8:00 am, noon and 6:00!

[inny]

Could it be roused, then to be indulged, by the whiff of a passing scent of coffee brewing, or bread baking, or savory onions hitting the grill?

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This? Is me.

I'm not the type to plan meals a week in advance. I don't think I even plan meals a meal in advance. I'm a sucker for the look, feel, or smell of food, so I walk into a grocery and see what looks good that day. I'm helpless in an open-air market, and I'm reduced to goo around street food.

As to when I eat... I'm a grazer. Years ago in college, I suffered bleeding ulcers. My Doc urged me to retrain myself to eat a little at a time, but to eat often. Even though the ulcers are long gone, the eating pattern stuck. I graze during the morning and afternoon (veggies, cheese, and the occasional piece of baklava) and eat my meal in the evening.

Fun thread

[Anna N]

Where does your own personal hunger come from? What is the spark?

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The smell of bacon and/or onions frying. Doesn't matter if I am totally sated, those two smells bring on hunger pangs.

[Milagai]

I just recently began a diet and one of the things that I was going to try and do is eat when I am hungry - instead of 8:00 am, noon and 6:00!

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I've grown FAT on that plan!

I am hungry all the time.

I used to have a hummingbird metabolism:

eat a little, constantly, and burn it off.

Came midlife, and I now eat a lot, constantly,

and my mild exercise regime does not help.

I feel SERIOUSLY hungry at regular intervals (~ every 3 hours)

and if I don't eat I get jittery, then headachy, then go all out crazy,

knocking things and mowing down children and old folks who

may be between me and my food.....

There are those enzymes: leptin, ghrelin, etc that regulate

the "hungry" and "satiated" feelings, and depending on where

yours is set, you eat more or less.

I definitely feel my switch has been re-set. I used to fill up

quickly, now I eat more before I feel full....

I wish I could re-set it back down.....

Milagai

[Carrot Top]

Good point.

But there's a lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling you can get without hunger pangs.

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I've never heard of that. A lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling?

Are you sure this isn't something that affects only the ancient gods of music that wander the earth endlessly?

Has anyone else experienced this?

[Carrot Top]

and if I don't eat I get jittery, then headachy, then go all out crazy,

knocking things and mowing down children and old folks who

may be between me and my food.....

There are those enzymes: leptin, ghrelin, etc that regulate

the "hungry" and "satiated" feelings, and depending on where

yours is set, you eat more or less.

Milagai

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I like this idea of knocking things and mowing down children and old folks who may be in front of the food. It sounds fun in an odd sort of way. May I join you in this mad dash sometime?

It is particularly enticing to know that our behavior can then be blamed on science.

Heh.

[Soup]

weather and season really drive my cravings...

This week is was cold, rainy and windy. I had a lot soup and noodles in soup. Yum.

[purplewiz]

eGullet. First and foremost, as it turns out.

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My first rule of eGullet: read the forums ONLY WHEN FULL. (Dinner ended about 20 minutes ago.)

In my experience, many emotions masquerade as hunger. Part of my own adventure in getting myself straightened out about food was to learn to distinguish between them - to recognize when I was really hungry, or at least in need of energy, as opposed to feeling something else and eating in response to it. It's still very difficult for me to recognize when I need to eat due to a lot of issues, but I'm very glad I've gotten much better at it.

This is why I also eat on a schedule - or at least have a schedule where I ask myself if I want to eat.

Certain smells get the old gastric juices going. Bacon and coffee were mentioned - for me, also add chocolate. Roast beef. Ground beef and onions browning together (one of my 10 favorite smells ever).

Then there are times when I just want a certain taste in my mouth. It has nothing to do with actual hunger, but the desire to experience flavor.

Marcia.

[Carrot Top]

In my experience, many emotions masquerade as hunger.

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I would agree with you, Marcia.

True hunger is something I think few people have felt if they have grown up in an average American household.

It just has not been forced upon us, this hunger for enough food to make our bodies run.

I can remember feeling truly hungry for food only several times in my life.

Both those times where when I was barely fourteen years old, trying to survive as a runaway from home.

What sparks my hunger is emotion. The emotion of wanting to share a meal with someone, as I do with my children. It is not my stomach grumbling that makes my tastebuds tingle, nor is it the aromas of the food - though the fine smells do create a stronger urge to eat.

The emotion, sometimes, of feeling a bit "empty" in a world where a solid and measurable success in anything is hard to find and even harder to define, unless it is in blunt financial terms. And finally, as anyone knows who has had enough money, the money does not make the cherry on the top of the ice cream all that joyous in a lasting or deeply meaningful way.

The emotional sense of dissonance in a world that is loud and in-your-face everywhere you turn - this sometimes makes me hungry - it makes me want to put something in my mouth for a feeling of reality, the reality that food simply "is" without question, in and of itself, without the extraneous intellectual meanderings around and about the subject.

The food is there to make us feel full.

The food is there to make us feel solid.

I wish that the food, for many people, could be a happier thing than what it is.

I also wish that the food did not have to carry this burden of satisfying urges that really require a different sort of satisfaction for a true answer to the question that is subliminally being asked.

I am lucky that food has not eaten me within these parameters - plain lucky to have been given enough emotional balance to be able to enjoy it for itself apart from these things, and to not be made overweight or unhealthy because of it.

But I do wonder at what is going on, as I look around me and see the hunger.

A hunger that seems to be for many things, but a hunger that is answered by eating.

[Zach Holmes]

I tend to work long hours at the restaurant I work at, and on the particularly busy days, I grab maybe a piece of bread w/ butter whenever I slow down enough to realize I Haven't eaten all day. My girlfriend wonders why I never eat at work...

Kinda wierd to be surrounded by really good food all day, but too busy to be hungry

Edited October 15, 2005 by Zach Holmes (log)

[Carrot Top]

There is a sense in the professional kitchen of eating that happens just from the sheer physical involvement with the food all day. The flavors seep into people that spend their time there, and are filling all on their own.

Of course some beer after work helps balance that bread-and-butter diet.

After all, if many people survived in past centuries on the nourishment that beer provides alone, with a chunk of bread or two, why not us?

Nice to have you at eG, Zach, and to have read your third post!

[Zach Holmes]

There is a sense in the professional kitchen of eating that happens just from the sheer physical involvement with the food all day. The flavors seep into people that spend their time there, and are filling all on their own.

Of course some beer after work helps balance that bread-and-butter diet.

After all, if many people survived in past centuries on the nourishment that beer provides alone, with a chunk of bread or two, why not us?

Nice to have you at eG, Zach, and to have read your third post!

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Thanks for the welcome, I have to admit, many days I have survived on beer and bread alone.

[naguere]

Good point.

But there's a lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling you can get without hunger pangs.

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I've never heard of that. A lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling?

Are you sure this isn't something that affects only the ancient gods of music that wander the earth endlessly?

Has anyone else experienced this?

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Ask any cyclist about 'The Bonk', a need for water an food, a bannana perhaps or a Mars Bar. From being a wobbly idiot with tears in your eyes, in 15 minutes all is under control and you are ready for the next 20 miles.

[Carrot Top]

Good point.

But there's a lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling you can get without hunger pangs.

←

I've never heard of that. A lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling?

Are you sure this isn't something that affects only the ancient gods of music that wander the earth endlessly?

Has anyone else experienced this?

←

Ask any cyclist about 'The Bonk', a need for water an food, a bannana perhaps or a Mars Bar. From being a wobbly idiot with tears in your eyes, in 15 minutes all is under control and you are ready for the next 20 miles.

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I was just teasing Pan, for he is a nice man.

Yeah, "The Bonk". (Heh.)

But really, I agree. Bicycling or any intense sport would certainly induce real need for nutrients by the body.

[bavila]

What causes my hunger? Right now I'm constantly hungry, namely from nursing a 7-week old baby.

I definitely have been experiencing the "I need carbs" feeling after workouts. Interesting that pregnancy and nursing seem to have exacerbated this feeling -- all that fluctuating blood chemistry. Early in pregnancy, I didn't get morning sickness so much as the feeling I would pass out if I didn't have a bottle of gatorade in my hands at all times.

On a psychological level, I can crave food (though I wouldn't call it hunger) when I want to be comforted (although, isn't there some physiological basis to this?). But also taste memories can get me going. Like last night watching the Iron Chef America featuring duck. Just the thought of duck dishes from the past can get both my tear and salivary ducts going.

[prasantrin]

I've never heard of that. A lightheaded "I need carbs" feeling?

Are you sure this isn't something that affects only the ancient gods of music that wander the earth endlessly?

Has anyone else experienced this?

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Whenever I get that feeling, I know I have to eat. In addition to feeling lightheaded, there's an odd feeling in my stomach--not quite butterflies, but something similar. If I don't eat within maybe half an hour of getting that feeling, I get the shakes. Then if I still don't eat, after a bit longer I start getting queasy and I can't eat--anything that goes in my stomach will come right back out, and even the smell of food will make me throw up. It has something to do with low-blood sugar levels, I've been told, and that I should be carrying around glucose tablets, or at least little snacks.

Ruined a perfectly good dinner in Prague...

[Curlz]

The low blood-sugar/Bonk/need to plow down children and old people is technically known as hypoglycemia. It's sort of the opposite of diabetes, from what I've been told. I've had it for as long as I can remember, and get the same side effects if I wait too long to eat. I know thin folks who have it as well as overweight ones, and the solution that seems to work best is to stay away from processed sugars/carbs (which cause a spike and quick drop) and to eat something SMALL every 3-4 hours. I always have a Go Lean protein bar or an apple with me for just this reason!

The analogy I've always used to explain the feeling is the old-fashioned (giant) electrical switch (think mad scientist/Young Frankenstein) on the wall, and someone is grabbing it and pulling it down--effectively 'powering down'--and I feel it happening. Very weird, but once you get used to it and know how to keep it in check, not too bad.

[Pontormo]

All I had for breakfast was a bowl of gruel.

--Oliver

[M.X.Hassett]

Um, the website I am on now. Hell even the dinnerII thread makes me hungry. That and breathing.

[Carrot Top]

Lately one of the reasons I recognize for being hungry (sic) is boredom. Bored? Eat.

Bad, bad, bad.