At its foundation eating is a means of energy production and provides the building blocks for life, it goes in one end, we take what we need, and it goes out the other.
It’s a big ol’ factory tasked with keeping you alive and nourished. The factory has two buying departments which govern intake, one is frugal and concerned for the companies short-term survival, the other’s more of a worrier, with a, ‘I’ll get it just in case’ mindset. Some people buy what they need whilst others tend to buy for future energy requirements. We evolved in far more uncertain times than these.
Hunger is about survival and comes from the gut…..follow your gut. It’s the rumble in your belly incited by receptors in the stomach; think rings which sense if the stomach is distended or empty when the diameter is reduced the hormone ghrelin is to request food. Hunger’s concern is that if we don’t eat soon we may perish. Hunger buys what it needs.
Appetite is convincing to eat more, the salesman who says ‘why buy twice? buy big now’. Both are necessary, having hunger allows you to survive and then appetite provokes overeating to store for when times get tough. When food was scarce inciting overeating and storing was key to survival. Problem is that today we don’t experience droughts of food and not being able to eat for a week or longer. Overeating when food is abundant is natural then add hyper-palatable foods, sleep deprivation, stress, and/or boredom and it becomes problematic…it becomes dangerous.
It’s worth reiterating that good choices are difficult enough without being sleep deprived, we naturally want to eat more and move less. The more sleep-deprived we are the better the appetite salesman and we buy more of a worse product.
You could make a basic argument that appetite is psychological and hunger physiological. If one can master the difference between these two - the difference between what we need and what we want then we can behold a profound change to our health and life. Imagine a life where you have what you need is vastly different from that where you have all you want. If one can master appetite and hunger they can master destiny.
In today’s society, we are guided (manipulated) to what we want which is in direct contradiction to what the human needs. Let’s say you’re hungover and bought only what you wanted at the supermarket and left what you needed - you’d be in big trouble.
A hangover is more about sleep deprivation than anything else and the optimum sleep is 8 hours. Statistically, 2/3 UK adults are sleep deprived so want and need, in-control/being controlled is a thin line.
So whose feeding the supermarkets want and ignoring their needs?