Secret of Hunger

Appetite is different from desire to eat. Both are not the same. We can control the hunger when we know why you feel like eating and which food you want to eat more. We can keep our body in proper shape too!

Appetite is like the movement of a clock. The desire bells in our stomach rings at breakfast time in the morning, lunchtime in the afternoon and the dinnertime in the night. Are we really eating due to hunger all those times? A silly question.

Why we are eating and how much we are eating has no relation with the hunger. They are only related with the desire to eat.

Hunger is different than the desire to eat. Imagine that you ate your stomach full and your wife or mother brought your favourite Jeelebi, Gulub jamoon in a plate. Then, you will eat them very eagerly. You have eaten them not with the hunger but with the desire to eat.

You cannot control yourself when you have desire to eat. You do not think like "just now I have taken food, why I am eating the food again?" You want to eat and you are eating; that's all. You are using your will power here.

Why we wish to eat even though we are not hungry.

Taste

There are different reasons for appetite. Among those the first and foremost is taste. Clusters of tiny cells taste buds are located on our tongue. When the food is taken in the mouth the taste is sensed by a group of small taste buds and this sensation is conveyed to the brain which makes us enjoy the taste.

Primarily there are four tastes viz sweet, salt, sour, and bitter. But scientists presume the existence of more taste sensations. Different types of taste buds aggregate on the different portion of the tongue. Taste buds sensing sweet and salt taste are located on the front part of tongue while the taste buds sensing sour taste are on the side portion of the tongue. Taste buds sensing bitterness are located on the rear portion of the tongue.

There are approximately 9000 taste buds on our tongue. The taste to which we react more and are sensitive depends on the hereditary genes. Some prefer sweet foods, some prefer chilly food because of this reason.

Smell

The taste sensation that we experience is limited but the smells which we sense are innumerable. Pleasant smells from the food enter the nostrils and goes to nosopharynx passage located in between the nose and mouth, the smell reach olfactory receptor cells the nerve impulses located these reach brain. Smelling sensation is 10,000 times sharper than the taste sensation. We can easily tell the taste of the food on the tongue; in fact the taste sensation that we get is mixed with that of the smell. The above-mentioned taste and smell enable us to recognise the type of food that we eat. Apart from this, there are some more factors that increase the desire to eat:

Eye catching or visual temptation Eating with friends Moods Variety Time, Habit Love of food

Eye Catching or Visual Temptation

When food is arranged beautifully on a table with eye catching colours, we desire to eat them. This is called "Visual temptation". In big hotels and restaurants the Chef arranges the food in a beautiful and eye catching way to create eating temptation in us. We feel like eating even when we are not hungry, and in fact we end up eating more. If its not tempting to the eye then we loose our appetite for no reason at all. The power of sight should not be discounted easily. Same is the case with women.

Eating With Friends

When we eat with friends, we laugh, chit chat with others and consume more food than usual. The reason is:

We spend more time when eating with friends than we are alone. This way our mouth works overtime.

When with a group, "serve some more, see I am eating more than you", kind of dialogues and little challenges encourages you to eat more. However, ladies have some exemption in this. Ladies eat less while eating in a group, especially among strangers, but they eat more when they are alone. They think that the rest of group may think "what a guzzler!" and eat less, especially those who are fat.

Mood

Eating more or eating less depends on the current mood also. When we are angry, bored, under mental pressure, tired and when food is handy we tend to eat more one way or the other. Be it snacks or regular food. Women tend to do this more often.

Also when we are depressed, lonely, in need of love or companionship we go back in time to our childhood and eat more.

Vareity

We have got two other characteristics in regard to eating.

When we find our favourite food items, we repeatedly eat them and end up eating more.

Secondly, when we come across new type of dishes (not usually eaten by us), we feel like eating them. When we find more varieties, we desire to taste each one of them and in the process we eat more.

Time and Habit

We are the slaves of habit and because of mere habit we take idly, coffee or pure, tea in the morning. Habit tells us when and what to eat. Why do we sit for meals in the afternoon? It is just because of lunchtime; There is no use of advising to eat only when you are hungry. This is the miracle of habit and we get hungry by afternoon. The same is true with the dinner.

Taste Temptations

We drool at the sight of some foods.This happens mainly when we see chocolates, sweets, cakes, and other items that have heavy carbohydrates, and fat. The release of serotonin chemical from our brain is the main cause of this temptation. We like fat and carbohydrates because our body needs these items since we get energy from carbohydrates and fat.

Suppression of Hunger (appetite)

Food habits depend upon mental, physical necessities. Message sent from intestine, brain and liver reaches the brain's front portion called "hypothalamuses". Due to these messages, we get the feeling of whether we are hungry or full of stomach.

Eating and emotions are interdependent. Production of Noradrenaline, serotonin chemicals is the main cause for this. When you are in depression, productions of these two chemicals increase and create the desire to eat food items that have more carbohydrates and fat. These food items reduce calms the depression.

Creation of medicine to increase the appetite was not successful, but damage to huothalamus make you to eat a lot or not at all.

Brief Description of Food Digestion Process

The food that we take first mixes with the saliva in the mouth and then splits into starch. After chewing, it reaches the stomach through the throat.

After reaching the stomach, the food is further split up by the acidic gastric juices secreted by the glands in the stomach. It converts into thick paste and reaches the duodenum. Then it mixes with the Bile enzymes there. This bile produced in the liver gets stored in the Gall bladder and helps in digestion of fats.

The bile also helps in splitting enzymes released by pancreas, fats, carbohydrates and proteins. There is a direct route from duodenum to the small intestine.

The last stage of digestion occurs in the small intestine. The enzymes here split the food in small atom size pieces. The nutritive contents of the food enter the bloodstream and the lymph system from here and the resultant waste products enter the large intestine.

While in the large intestines, a large portion of its water content and salt are absorbed and are supplied to the body. The waste products are excreted through rectum in the form of stool. A major content of the stools is fibre since it will not be digested.