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Hunger
Hunger is a powerful motivator, with internal and external incentives.
Hunger and eating are motivated by:
- Biological factors: we eat to survive and provide fuel for the body.
- Cognitive factors: we might eat a meal to please the cook who worked hard making it; we choose whole grain over white bread because it is healthy.
- No-drive reduction benefits; sometimes we eat because food is there, not because we are hungry.
Internal Incentives
There are many biological mechanisms that signal hunger:
- pressure and neural sensors around the stomach
- blood glucose levels
- hormones - leptin signals the brain to stop eating, ghrelin signals the brain to start eating
- hypothalamus regulates appetite through hormones
Orexigenic signals - sent from the digestive system to the brain, telling your brain to switch hunger on
Anorexigenic signals - sent from the digestive system to the brain, telling your brain to switch hunger off
The pleasure we get from food is also an internal incentive. Our brains contain pleasure sensors that respond to sugars and fats, because they are highly caloric. We have evolved to enjoy these tastes and crave foods that provide them to us.
External Incentives
External eating cues can motivate us to eat, even when we are not hungry.
These cues include:
- sight or smell of food
- exposure to certain foods
- cultural preferences
- time of day
- social factors - we eat more when around others
- visual appeal of food
Practice: Hunger
An orexigenic signal is: