– Why is it that humans can survive for weeks without food, but if the body goes without food for just a few hours people start to feel uncomfortably hungry?
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Biologically speaking, as a species we are still very much prehistoric.
The human species and some offshoots have been around for well over a million years and the anatomically modern human for almost 300,000.
For most of that time food was scarce and we spent most of the time looking for it. History only spans about 20,000 years, so we haven’t yet had time from a evolutionary perspective to evolve away from that biological urge to hunt for food constantly.
Our brains are basically wired to avoid starvation. Some species, snakes for example, have the ability to consume massive amounts of food in one sitting and then can wait for weeks to eat again.
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