The 6 Human Hungers

When I heard there are ‘types’ of hungers, I was amazed. I thought that when we feel hungry we eat something and that’s it. But it is more than what meets the eye…

Before we get into the hungers, let’s talk about evolution and how the early humans, the hunter-gatherers dealt with hunger and contrast it with the present times. In evolution 10,000- 12,000 years is like a split second. 500,000-1 million years is a considerable amount of time in which we can see some changes.

Let us talk about the 6 human hungers one by one:

1. Thirst Hunger

Thirst is one of the most important hunger. Most of the times when we feel hungry, it is actually thirst! Our body requires a great deal of hydration.(70% of our body is water!)

Let us go back to the hunter-gatherers. They didn’t store water in bottles and all, so when they felt thirsty, their body communicated to them to eat food rich in water. That’s why now when WE feel thirsty, we resort to eat something rather than drinking water which is available now.

2. Nutritional Hunger

Most of the people these days are starving and at the same time eat more than what is required. This may seem absurd. But what I am trying to say is that people are eating food which does not provide their body the nutrition it needs. We will become more healthy by eating more of the good stuff rather than eliminating the bad stuff. Just by eating more green leafy vegetables, we can get a head start to get the nutrition our body requires.

3. Variety Hunger

If we eat the same food day in day out, we get bored of it and eat something else. Every thing we eat has something good in it for us and something bad. So the variety hunger is our body’s way of saying, ‘I need other things also, so eat something else.’

This too is a evolutionary thing. When food (vegetables) was readily available to our ancestors some 500,000 years ago they would eat them for some days because who would want to go hunting and risk their lives when food was already there. But after some time they would feel a need to eat something else and then they would go hunting.

These days we can get variety in a single meal, on one plate we can get 4-5 different things we want. We can get different cuisines in different meals of the day. So, variety in present times is not as necessary as it should be. But it is important.

4. Empty Stomach Hunger

Empty stomach hunger is actually not a hunger, but a sensation. Everything we feel about food is evolutionary and takes us back to our ancestors (500,000 years ago).

The most common way of death of our ancestors was starvation. So when they had had a feeling of empty stomach, they ate something so that they don’t die.

This is what our body communicates to us when we have an empty stomach sensation.(‘I don’t want to die of starvation, EAT SOMETHING!). But times have changed now and this sensation is good for our health. And we don’t have eat if we feel this hunger. A glass of water would the best thing!

5. Emotional Hunger

This is a very tricky hunger. It can ‘trick’ you into eating something that you don’t really want to eat.

Emotional hunger satisfies our emotional needs not our nutritional needs, therefore it doesn’t care about the harm we do to our bodies by eating something that we crave emotionally.

This is a hunger we can work on by listening to our dialogue, what we say to ourselves and how we convince ourselves into eat something that is not even required by our body.

Many people feel happy during and after eating foods rich in sugar. Their body communicates to them that they will feel happy after having that food.

6. Low Blood Sugar Hunger

Our bodies are either sugar burning or fat burning. Sugar burning-type feel the highs and lows of energy throughout the day. So, when they have low blood sugar, they feel a sudden uncontrollable hunger to eat foods rich in sugar. The longer they wait to eat, more flexible their food rules become and they would eat foods that they would have given up earlier. This is a very dangerous hunger.

Fat burning-type have steady flow of energy and they don’t have low blood sugar hunger and a desire to snack.

The only hungers which are worth fulfilling are thirst and nutritional hungers. When these hungers are satisfied the other hungers take care of themselves expect emotional hunger which we have to work on ourselves.

Source: The 6 Human Hungers Driving Your Food Choices | Eric Edmeades