Hunger and satiation are feelings. Hunger drives people to consume food. Satiety is the sense of being satisfied rather than hungry. Hunger is a common sensation that occurs after only a few hours without eating and is often considered unpleasant. Between 5 and 20 minutes after eating, you will feel satisfied. There are various hypotheses as to why people feel hungry. Another sensation related to eating is the urge to eat food, sometimes known as appetite.
Hunger is also the most generally used phrase in social science and policy discussions to describe the condition of people who have a chronic lack of food and experience hunger continually or regularly, which can lead to malnutrition. A healthy, well-nourished person can go for weeks without eating according to claims .
What Exactly is Hunger? Hedonic vs. Homeostatic
Before we get started, let’s define hunger: what causes you to say, “I’m hungry?” What happens inside your brain and body that causes you to say, “I’m hungry?”
According to Michael Lowe, a psychology professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, feeling hungry might signify at least two things, and they are quite distinct.
Of course, there’s the standard definition of hunger: when you haven’t eaten for several hours, your stomach begins to grumble, and you experience the typical body symptoms associated with hunger, according to Lowe. Hunger is caused by your body’s desire for calories; the requirement for energy triggers the signal that it’s time to eat, he explained.
Lowe revealed that researchers call this form of hunger “homeostatic hunger.”
Dr. Amy Rothberg, director of the Weight Management Clinic and an assistant professor of internal medicine in the University of Michigan Health System’s Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology, and Diabetes, described homeostatic hunger as “a complex series of signals throughout the body and brain that tell us we need food for fuel.”
When the body’s energy reserves are depleted, hormones send out a warning. When this happens, ghrelin (also known as the “hunger hormone”) levels rise, but are quickly lowered once a person begins eating, according to Rothberg. Furthermore, when food passes through the body, a sequence of satiety reactions (which signal fullness) are triggered, beginning in the mouth and continuing into the stomach and small intestine, she explained. “Hey, we’re getting food down here!” these impulses inform the brain.
Another set of impulses is active in the brain, according to Rothberg. She explained that there are two sets of conflicting signals: hunger-stimulating (“orexigenic”) and hunger-suppressing (“anorexigenic”) peptides. Peptides are hormones that are in charge of of telling the brain that a person needs to eat or that a person feels full.
Which Foods are the most Filling?
Unsurprisingly, eating is the most effective approach to relieve homeostatic hunger. And, according to Rothberg, the best way to keep that full sensation for a long period is to consume nutritious foods that, well, fill you up.
According to Rothberg, a diet high in fiber and lean protein is particularly satisfying. According to her, protein is the most filling of the macronutrients. Indeed, according to a recent meta-analysis research published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, consuming more protein increases feelings of fullness when compared to eating less protein.
However, there are several meals that should be avoided. Zero-calorie sweeteners, for example, might confound satiety signals and fool your brain into believing you haven’t eaten much when you have, prompting you to eat more, according to Rothberg.
For example, while they may help people control their blood sugar levels, there is conflicting information about whether they help people cut calories or lose weight. Rothberg was explicitly alluding to how zero-calorie sweeteners may affect feelings of hunger and fullness in our conversation with her.
People “don’t necessarily eat because of the signals that govern our energy stores,” according to Rothberg. Rather, you may simply desire food.
Hedonic hunger is the term for this type of hunger. However, hedonic hunger — the desire to eat, concentrate on food, or crave something — isn’t as well known as homeostatic hunger, according to Lowe. Lowe created the term “hedonic hunger” in a review published in the journal Physiology & Behavior in 2007.
According to Lowe, the most frequently accepted argument about hedonic hunger is that the human propensity to highly appealing meals, which humans developed long ago, has run amok in the present environment, with the abundance of very wonderful foods.
He claims that people want to eat even when they are not hungry. People’s brains learn to expect and demand highly pleasant meals the more they eat them, he explained. You can call it hunger, but the source of that “hunger” sense appears to be more about wanting pleasure than a requirement for calories, according to him.
But, as Lowe points out, people must recognize that pleasure plays a role in all sorts of eating. According to him, pleasure is related to both homeostatic and hedonic eating, whereas the requirement for calories is only relevant to homeostatic eating. When someone is homeostatically hungry, for example, he is motivated by both the calories and the pleasure that eating provides, according to him. Hedonically hungry people, on the other hand, are motivated solely by pleasure, according to him.
Even if a person can tell if their hunger is hedonic or homeostatic, hedonic hunger is more difficult to overcome.
According to Lowe, the easiest way to avoid hedonic hunger is to keep those highly appealing, tempting foods out of the house. If you don’t want to empty your cupboard, he suggests trying to suppress your need by eating something “less destructive” — such as a piece of fruit instead of sweets — and then seeing if you still crave something sweet.
Finally, keeping goodies in portion-controlled servings may be beneficial, according to Lowe. Rather than keeping a half gallon of ice cream in the freezer, get chocolate ice pops and eat one out of it.
Hunger Pang
The physical sensation of hunger is linked to stomach muscular contractions. High levels of the ghrelin hormone are thought to cause these contractions, which are commonly referred to as hunger pains when they become severe. The hormones peptide YY and leptin have an opposing influence on hunger, generating a feeling of fullness. Ghrelin is released when blood sugar levels go too low, which can happen when you go too long without eating. Hunger can cause acute and painful stomach spasms in children and young adults.
Inconsistent meals might aggravate hunger sensations. People who cannot afford to eat more than once a day frequently decline one-time additional meals, fearing that if they do not eat at approximately the same time the following days, they will have extra acute hunger sensations. Although older people may have fewer intense stomach contractions when they are hungry, they still experience the negative consequences of insufficient food intake, such as weakness, irritation, and poor focus. Long-term malnutrition increases illness susceptibility and hinders the body’s ability to heal.
What Makes us Hungry?
It’s been two hours since breakfast, and I’m starting to get those familiar hunger pangs, which makes me wonder: what makes us hungry?
How do our brains determine when it’s time to eat again?
Hunger serves a clear purpose: it signals that we must eat in order to keep our bodies nourished. However, most of us live in a world where food is always available and meals are planned around social events. Is a reminder to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner really necessary?
So it appears. While our culture has evolved to give us with limitless food options, our bodies are more concerned with keeping the well-oiled machine running.
This means that once our stomach is empty, we begin to feel hungry. Even if we aren’t really hungry, the sight of a delectable Halloween treat being shared in the office may tempt us.
That’s because our brains are looking for high-energy foods in case we need to go without later.
The word “brain” is important in this sentence because our gray matter is in charge of hunger.
Hunger and an Empty Stomach
Our gastrointestinal tracts gradually empty after a meal by pushing food through the stomach and small and large intestine.
Undigested food is swept up by specialized contractions called the migrating motor complex (MMC), which takes around 130 minutes. A hormone known as motilin controls the MMC’s terminal phase. The rumbling in our stomachs is caused by motilin-controlled contractions, which also correspond with hunger pangs.
Ghrelin is another hormone linked to hunger control. Ghrelin activates agouti-related peptide (AgRP)-expression neurons in the hypothalamus area of the brain in mice, which signal hunger.
The control center for hunger is these neurons. Mice gorge themselves on food when AgRP neurons are turned on artificially.
As a result, our brains pick up signals from our stomachs and inform us that it’s time for our next meal, which is about 2 hours after we last ate. But that doesn’t explain the allure of a tasty snack in between meals.