Over the recent years, people’s consciousness about their eating habits has significantly raised. There has been a lot of research on neural and psychological processes that occur while consuming food. Those examinations are intended to discover the causes and consequences of obesity and other related eating disorders. With the commonly increasing pace of life and the emergence of new factors that influence diet, the issue of hedonic hunger has become more complex as well. This paper will observe some common dietary habits and mark the ways stress and visual advertising increase people’s tendency to overeat.
The most noticeable habits identified after analyzing the Food Journal were late-night snacking and stress eating. The first one is most probably connected to a shifting schedule – the tendency to work during night hours and skip full-fledged meals due to working or studying. It has been confirmed by Wenk (2015) that «skipping breakfast and then overeating in the evening play a significant role in weight gain and obesity» (p. 30); therefore, this practice can be considered unhealthy and even harmful in terms of sustaining a fit body. The second habit was established after analyzing a few instances of presumably stressful situations (having an unpleasant meeting, writing a test, receiving the test results) that were followed by spontaneous meals. It is worth mentioning that those meals were remarkably high in calories, thus, presenting another example of behavior likely to provoke weight gain. All things considered, these dietary tendencies almost certainly have adverse effects on digestion, fitness, and overall health.
It is essential to realize that several particular neural processes arouse the desire for non-scheduled or unbalanced meals. The human brain is known to take pleasure while eating tasty food, therefore transmitting signals to produce hormones of happiness: endorphins and dopamine. Noticeably, food that contains a large percentage of sugar and fat boosts the release of endorphins and seems more pleasurable for people. Additionally, according to Wenk (2015), the brain gradually decreases its hormonal response to food, motivating people to consume larger amounts of sugar and fat to receive the same emotional «reward». This process is also the reason why those who have often experienced stress eating or are simply more addicted to food-related pleasure are more prone to overeating. To put it differently, the satisfaction people get from food naturally reduces over time and works similarly to a drug, encouraging them to consume more.
Another critical factor in the psychological perception of food is its visual presentation. A common practice among food advertisers is displaying products and dishes in the most desirable and appetizing way, inducing people to purchase or order the promoted item. In their research, Spence, Okajima, Cheok, Petit, and Michel (2016) introduce the term «visual hunger», which, they presume, could be an evolutionary adaption, as «our brains learned to enjoy seeing food since it would likely precede consumption» (p. 54). Evidence from the same study shows that there is, in fact, a significant increase in amounts of consumed food among those who regularly watched culinary programs or images of beautifully cooked dishes. The pleasure a person receives from looking at attractively presented food causes hedonic hunger and transcends any concerns he may have for calorie count. These facts prove that visual portrayal of food leads people’s eating behavior towards unconscious and excessive consumption.
To summarize, human dietary habits are in many ways controlled by subconscious processes occurring in the brain and the neural system. Although some unhealthy eating practices may be developed deliberately to match the schedule, others are controlled by the brain’s demand for hormones. Moreover, the way people build an addiction to food is similar to drugs in terms of increasing amounts of compounds needed to satisfy the desire for pleasure. Visual attraction to tasty food is also a key factor, commonly used in advertising for the same purpose of inducing people to overeat.
References
Spence, C., Okajima, K., Cheok, A. D., Petit, O., & Michel, C. (2016). Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation. Brain and Cognition, 110, 53–63.
Wenk, G. L. (2015). Neurobiology of feeding. In Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (pp. 27-64).