Food you normally think it’s good tastes perfect when you’re very hungry. Even regular food tastes special when you are starving.
In: Biology
It’s your hypothalamus the one that does that. The taste of the food as measured by the chemical receptors in your tongue (and also nasal cavities) is the same; but the emotional response you experience to that food is an additional component to what we call “taste”, it’s part of the satisfaction we feel when we eat something tasty, or even when we drink water when we are very thirsty. That emotional component is controlled by your hypothalamus, it’s a primitive region of your brain that regulates a lot of visceral responses, but that is also correlated to emotional behaviors.
So your hypothalamus knows whether your blood needs more nutrients or not, and regulates the emotional response of taste according to that. It gives you the additional boost of emotional satisfaction when you need to continue eating, so you actually continue eating.
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