He coined the term “hedonic hunger,” or the primal drive to consume anything delectable even if we aren’t physically hungry. “The obesity epidemic has nothing to do with the need for calories,” says Michael Lowe, PhD, a professor of psychology at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Critically, just as our bodies don’t need addictive substances, they don’t need the extra calories in fried dough. Under this theory, a hankering for doughnuts could be as hard-wired as a craving for heroin or alcohol. Once triggered, people may seek them out over and over again for the jolt of pleasure they bring. Sweet foods, in particular, flood the brain with the chemical signal dopamine. That’s because modern society has become awash in easy-to-grab, highly processed foods that our pleasure-seeking brains compel us to eat. Hedonic eating is now being studied as one of the biggest drivers of obesity. This kept our ancestors from starving.īut our hedonic appetites have turned on us. When early humans found one of these treats, the hedonic reward system encouraged them to keep eating. Back then, these kinds of energy-dense foods were relatively rare. “They like to talk about how they gave us Dr Pepper in our baby bottles and fed us honey buns when we were 6 months old and we turned out fine,” says Gibson, who is now 23.Įons ago, the first humans quickly learned that naturally sweet foods are never poisonous and therefore safe. They lived in a trailer and subsisted on a lot of cheap, processed food that they could afford on their minimum-wage salaries. Gibson’s parents worked factory jobs in North Carolina. She sometimes crouched in a corner of their tiny kitchen that couldn’t easily be seen from any of the doorways. Other times, she would savor slices of soft white bread dipped in ranch dressing. Gibson would microwave a frank and eat it on a piece of bread with mustard. But often they had enough hot dogs or slices of bologna that one or two wouldn’t be noticed. She knew the cream-filled Zingers snack cakes her dad liked were off-limits. She would slip out of her bed and begin scanning the fridge and cupboards for food that wouldn’t be easily missed. Gibson, who says she was around age 6 at the time, knew that for 2 precious hours, until her father returned from his factory shift at 11:30 p.m., she could eat in secret. It was the sound of her mother’s bedroom door finally latching shut as she turned in to sleep. Medically reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MDįrom the time her mom tucked her into bed at 8 o’clock each night, Angie Gibson would lie awake and listen for the click.
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