Why We Eat the Way We Do - The Science of Appetite
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
5 billion pounds.
That’s the estimated collective amount Americans are overweight.
Recently, there was an interesting Time magazine cover story that discussed the science of appetite and asked:
Just why is our appetite so powerful a driver of our behavior, and, more important, how can we bring it to heel?
These are difficult questions to answer, as there are many factors that can influence appetite, including “taste, smell, sight, texture, brain chemistry, gut chemistry, metabolism and, most confounding of all, psychology.”
The article discusses several of these factors in more depth, including how:
We’re programmed to eat to excess to store energy.
“We were hardwired to eat and eat—and particularly eat fatty foods because we didn’t get them often,” says Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History. We’re programmed not only to overeat but also to fail to recognize immediately just when we’ve reached that point. Mothers tell kids not to wolf their food because it’s harder to enjoy it that way and also because even after you’ve had enough, it can take a while for your brain to get the message. By the time it does, you’re not just full; you’re stuffed. “The people who didn’t immediately lose their appetites, who could gorge themselves and keep going, those people would survive longer during the next famine,” says Dr. Jeffrey Flier, obesity scientist and professor at Harvard Medical School.
The wide availability of inexpensive, high-calorie foods feeds directly into this historical tendency and contributes to a greater risk for obesity.
