Page 76 - Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon PDF Program

that are involved with reward and pleasure. Therefore, food can create a conditioned
response that is evoked by the mere sight of food, or even by being in an environment
in which these foods are consumed.
50

While explaining food cravings and hunger in this purely biologically manner is
intriguing – especially the connection between the psychoactive compounds in food
and hunger, these concepts seem to be based more on speculation that substantial
research findings.
51

In reality, the total body of research seems to suggest that there are both biological

and learned influences on appetite, and that these two influences are highly
intertwined and probably cannot be separated.

Evidence from a wide variety of sources supports the idea that eating motivation is not

regulated according to a simple cycle of ‘depletion and repletion’, but rather a series of
motivational effects of the presence of food, its taste, smell, palatability, and a whole
host of other external cues.

Within the last decade, it has been recognized that an increasing proportion of human
52
food consumption is driven by pleasure, known as ‘hedonic hunger’. And this
hedonic hunger creates many of our learned eating habits.

In other words, it is the way that we eat each day that ‘teaches’ our body when to
expect food, and even what kinds of foods to expect.

The exact term for this phenomenon is ‘food entrainment’. In animal studies we refer
to the reaction to food expectation as ‘food anticipatory activity’. And this isn’t just a
‘psychological’ thing (it’s not just ‘all in your head’).

Eat Stop Eat 54