Hunger is a sense that people can change.
Senses are our body's way of perceiving what's going on in the environment. The sense of sight allows you to see things that exist in the world around you. Your eyes provide a capacity by which you can make decisions about what will help and harm you, which is important for survival.
You probably never thought about hunger being a sense. Hunger is a sense because it’s your body’s reaction to a lack of food, which, if unmet, could be detrimental to survival in the most primitive sense. Hunger makes you feel uncomfortable and irritable, and ultimately, your body wants you to respond to these feelings by feeding it. Unfortunately, people’s responses to hunger are often suboptimal for their long-term health, and include overeating or reaching for convenience foods.
Just like you can close your eyes to reduce the impact of your sense of sight, you too can change the sense of hunger and reduce the severity of hunger pangs that arise throughout the day. If you don’t feel as hungry, there are fewer opportunities to potentially make unhealthy eating decisions.
Your memories influence your hunger
Hunger is a sense that draws you to the food it knows has historically satisfied you. It does this mainly by drawing on the sense of smell, but it also is strengthened if there is a memorable context associated with a food’s consumption. The more your body recognizes a food which, when previously consumed, satisfied and did not harm you, hunger rises in anticipation of consuming it. It does this because your body knows it is safe to eat and will bring you pleasure. Conversely, hunger will not rise when presented with food that you previously found unappetizing or made you feel sick. Processed foods, which are intended to taste consistent and therefore, are viewed as reliable sources of calories, can also increase hunger for a similar reason.
What if you were to make eating less memorable or less consistent? These tactics can neutralize cravings. One way that you could do this is by introducing unknown calories to your diet about which your brain has no previous recollection.
Feeding Tubes
About half a million people in the United States, including many children, use a feeding tube because of a medical condition. When people have a feeding tube, many reportedly feel less hungry. Based on my research as a citizen scientist, I believe the reason why this occurs is due to the consumption of food without any associated taste or smell. Usage of the senses of taste and smell are how the body best determines what it’s eating, and whether or not something is a recognizable, safe source of calories. Hunger is highly influenced by the senses of taste and smell and is the body’s way of driving you towards calories that your body has indexed as being safe and supportive for survival. Whenever the body consumes unknown calories, this should turn hunger down. A feeding tube is a great example of this at work.
With feeding tube patients, the medical community is most concerned with the total number of calories and the ratio of macronutrients consumed. They are overlooking the impact smell and taste have on feelings of hunger, and because of this, there is a risk that once a feeding tube is removed, patients may have a hard time getting their appetite back to a more “normal” level. There is a solution to this: introducing scents or flavors to the feeding tube regiment.
I am not a medical professional and have not had these theories studied, but I have done an incredible amount of research on hunger. It seems that there are some very sensible, logical linkages to what drives hunger like what I describe above, that are being missed or underresearched. If these theories were proven right, a change in approach to managing patients with feeding tubes could ensure a greater number of successful outcomes once tubes are no longer part of their lives.