ELI5, why do we eat even though we are not hungry?
In: Biology
It’s complicated. It’s thought that the flexibility of human eating habits reaches back to the primal phase when humans were opportunistic hunter gatherers. Basically we just wandered around until we found stuff we could eat. Sometimes only finding a little and sometimes finding a lot, like large patch of berries, or making a large kill lead to people being able to eat too much in preparations for lean times and being able to go long periods with minimal food. This is described as being “opportunistic feeders”. Raccoons and bears are also opportunistic feeders will very little self regulation. When people raise raccoons they often become obese because raccoons only stop eating when their stomachs are full. When you’re designed for feast or famine, you tend to eat like you’re trying to get fat.
This, plus people are brainwashed into thinking three meals a day is healthy. Small meals interspersed with snacks is usually a better way to eat but in today’s society it’s difficult.
I mean, personally I only eat when I’m hungry.
Evolutionarily speaking, in hunter gatherer days we had no guarantee when we’ll next be able to eat. So eating whenever we got food was better for survival.
People eat for pleasure(pleasure is a good feeling so they eat a lot of fast food), to make time pass faster, because they are stressed out, nervous and/or anxious( many people use food as an antidepressive), and many people eat for social reasons for exemples some kinds of beverage like beer and some sorts of food are mostly only eaten when people are gathered socially like in a bar. This happens a lot here in Brazil.
Do you know a TV program from TLC called My 600 lb life? Many participants overeat and become obese because they were molested or violented when they were children. So they eated a lot to become happier and try to forget what happened to them.
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