Hunger Can Be Manipulated. Stop Doing It.

Note: this article is part of our series on no diet weight loss for gay men.

Is it possible to be less hungry?

It would solve a lot of our problems. We’d manage unhealthy cravings better. We’d stop binging so much. We’d stop worrying about portion control, eating less, or watching what we eat.

Some medical interventions reduce hunger, but few of us would make the Faustian bargain. Stapling our stomachs, using prescription appetite suppressants, or taking over-the-counter supplements may work but the consequences can be hellish.

Sure, there are natural things you can do to temporarily reduce hunger, like drinking a glass of water right before a meal, adding hot peppers to dishes or eating so much fiber you could glue the government’s food pyramid to the floor.

But for most people, these are unworkable methods. Drinking a big glass of water when you’re not thirsty? Eating hot peppers when you don’t like spicy food? Eating enough fiber when most Americans eat half the recommended amount?

Caught between ugly medical interventions and unworkable dietary changes, the idea of reducing hunger is a pipe dream, a mythical dietary paradise, a Hungry-La, if you will. It’s a nice thought, but completely unsupported by facts.

Or is it?

Almost everything we know about reducing hunger comes from within the suffocating walls of the diet-weight loss industrial complex. Climb over them, pay a visit to some of the neighboring disciplines, like physiology and neuroscience, and you’ll be astounded to learn there are indeed effective, painless ways to reduce hunger.

To make the appetite-reducing, cross-science innovations work we first must understand hunger, for it is not at all what it appears to be.

Mind Over Stomach

Most of us think hunger is caused by an empty belly or a biological need for fuel.

This is an accurate but incomplete view. Hunger often has nothing to do with the emptiness of your belly. Biologists proved that long ago when they made a startling discovery: Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, is lowest at approximately 9:00 in the morning.

That may not sound like an earth-shaking discovery until you realize its significance: At 9:00 am our bellies are at their emptiest (since we probably haven’t eaten for 14 hours). Every morning we wake up to the counter intuitive nature of hunger—we experience no hunger despite the longest stretch of time we’ve gone without food.

Hunger, it appears, is a highly suggestible state that can be influenced by a variety of factors that have nothing to do with the emptiness of your belly.

Think of hunger as two related states of being.

“Natural Hunger”

The first, for a lack of a better term, is “natural hunger.” That’s a traditional understanding of our desire for food—your belly is empty, your body needs fuel, hunger arises.

“Manipulated Hunger”

The second state is “manipulated hunger.” In this state, it doesn’t matter whether your belly is empty or full, or whether you have a biological need for fuel. You experience hunger because somebody or something brings it out in you.

Our hunger is constantly being manipulated. Here are some examples you have no doubt experienced:

• 
  You’re not hungry but suddenly you hear the sizzle of a steak being grilled. The aroma wafts toward you and now you are overcome with hunger.
• You’re not hungry. Even the sizzle of the steak doesn’t perk up your appetite. But your partner talks you into having a bite and next thing you know, you finish the steak with gusto.
• You’re not particularly hungry, but a commercial for deep-dish pizza comes on and suddenly you find yourself tapping the takeout app.
• You’re not particularly hungry when you stop at the gas station to pick up a bottle of water but row after row of candy bars and snacks awakens the hunger within.
• You’re not hungry but your partner is so you accompany them down to the hotel’s free breakfast to have a cup of coffee. You end up eating a full breakfast.
• You’re not hungry but the SuperBowl party is rockin’ and all your friends are snacking. Seeing people eat and the desire to join the fun combine to ignite hunger.

In each of these cases, hunger wasn’t generated by an empty belly but an outside force. Scientists refer to it as a “conditioned response.” This is when hunger, highly suggestible to certain stimuli, is “conditioned” to respond.

It’s this characteristic of hunger, as a conditioned response, that brings physiologists and neuroscientists to a rather surprising conclusion: Much of the hunger we experience on an everyday basis isn’t “natural,” it’s manipulated.

Everyone Is In On The Act

The sheer magnitude of the manipulation is staggering and it explains to a great degree why this country is suffering from an overweight epidemic. Here are some of the ways it happens.

Exposure To Food Advertising

A recent study published by the American Psychological Association concluded that people eat 45 percent more after watching food ads on TV, whether they feel hungry or not.

Food ads condition hunger. If you’re not hungry when you see an ad, the chances are you’ll get hungry. If you’re a little bit hungry when you see it, you’re likely to get a lot hungrier. Big Food isn’t just selling product; they’re merchandising hunger.

Worse, about 80 percent of food ads are for fast food, sugary drinks, candy, and unhealthy snacks, which researchers at the University of Michigan say hijack the brain’s reward systems, causing us to crave unhealthy foods.

How big is the problem? Food companies spend tens of billions of dollars in advertising every year.

The Ubiquity of Food

It isn’t just Big Food conditioning our hunger; our entire society is in on the act. There is almost nowhere you can go and no activity you can participate in that doesn’t have food as a central focus. We, as a society, have decided that food should accompany everything we do.

We eat everywhere. In the car, at the theatre, at a concert, while walking, while talking, while conducting meetings. We also eat throughout the day. Breakfast, snack before lunch, lunch, snack before dinner, dinner, snack after dinner.

In a tennis league? Bring food so the team can snack between matches. Going to a baseball game? Have a hot dog! Going to the movies? Popcorn! As Dr. Jason Fung, an expert on weight loss has said:

“Food at the ballgame! Food with movies! Food with TV! Food in between halves of kids’ soccer! Food while listening to a lecture! Food at the concerts! You can eat with a goat. You can eat on a boat. You can eat in a house. You can eat with a mouse. Conditioned responses, every one.”

If food is a stimulus that conditions a hunger response and it’s everywhere all the time, then is it any wonder we have high levels of hunger?

The Rise of “Grazing”

“Grazing,” or eating six small meals instead of three bigger ones, is a terrible, horrible, very bad, no good way to lose weight. Only members of the diet-weight loss industrial complex think it’s a good idea. Experts in neighboring disciplines like biology, chemistry, physiology, neurobiology, and brain science are horrified that anyone, let alone dietitians, would recommend it.

Why? Because food doesn’t just ameliorate hunger; it causes it. As we’ve seen in example after example, the presence of food conditions hunger. Basically, grazing trains you to be hungrier.

Eating small meals is the equivalent of eating appetizers, which the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as “a food or drink that stimulates the appetite.” Yes, the diet-weight loss industrial complex thinks you can lose weight by whetting your appetite.

You don’t need Kafka to experience absurdity. You could just go to your local dietitian.

The Rise of Snacking

Big Food makes sure food is available everywhere (donuts in gas stations, vending machines in high schools) and dietitians, nutritionists and doctors recommend snacking to ward off hunger. To accommodate this new ethos of 24/7 food our societal norms have changed. It is now normal to snack constantly.

Inadvertent Associations With Food

You don’t need food to condition hunger. You can do it by association, too. Have you ever wondered why you want popcorn every time you go to the movies? It isn’t just that you see the popcorn machine. It’s that over time you’ve learned to associate movies with eating popcorn. Therefore every time you go to the movies, you get hungry for popcorn.

The same could be said about the association between hot dogs and professional baseball games, wine at art openings and donuts at meetings. 

Consistent associations, over time, will condition hunger. So you go to a baseball game and you crave a hot dog. You go to a gallery opening and you crave a glass of wine.

The “paired associations” don’t end there. You see the McDonald’s golden arches and you get hungry. You hear the trill of the ice cream truck and you get hungry. In some ways we are like Pavlov’s dogs. The bell rings (we see an ad, hear a jingle, go to a movie) and we salivate.

The Pressure To Eat When We’re Not Hungry

Perhaps the most insidious way to manipulate hunger is to eat when we have no appetite. As children, we wake up, and we may or may not be hungry. Doesn’t matter. Your parents insist you eat the most important meal of the day. Fights erupt. “But I’m not hungry!” you protest. Your parents lay down the law and you choke down the food.

You go to school; the lunch bell rings at noon. You may or may not be hungry. Doesn’t matter. You have 25 minutes to eat. You know it may be hours before you have a chance to eat again, so you open your lunch box.

Dinner time. You may or may not be hungry. Doesn’t matter. You’re not leaving the table unless you finish your plate.

A lifetime of scheduled meals does two things to us. First, it trains us to eat when we’re not hungry. Second, it teaches us to associate eating with a certain time frame (“it’s noon—time to eat!”). The result? You eat not because you’re hungry but because it’s noon.

So how do we break these hunger associations? Stay tuned for our post next week.