Do you eat with your eyes, brain or gut?
‘Tis the season of festivities, bringing forth chances to savor delightful holiday treats. During this time, the age-old adage that asserts ‘you eat with your eyes first’ holds a special significance. Yet, the intricacies of eating behavior, as revealed by scientific studies, demonstrate that the act of determining what, when, and how much to consume extends beyond simply satisfying caloric needs.
Hunger cues, though influential, represent only a fraction of the reasons behind people’s eating choices. Delve into the captivating realm of how the brain’s interactions with food mold decisions about what and when to eat.
Feasting with your eyes.
Feasting with your eyes extends beyond a mere saying, influencing intricate food-related behaviors in humans and animals. For instance, the presence of McDonald’s packaging can enhance taste preferences in children, from chicken nuggets to carrots. Visual cues, such as illuminating a light during food delivery, may induce overeating in animals.
Sensory stimuli, including sounds, smells, and textures, shape the pleasurable outcomes of eating, impacting food-related decisions. Catching a radio jingle, seeing a TV ad, or passing by a favorite eatery can significantly influence your choice to consume, occasionally leading to overindulgence.
Deciphering food-related cues isn’t limited to external stimuli; it involves your body’s internal environment. Engaging in eating with your stomach in mind, using cognitive and brain mechanisms, internal signals (interoceptive cues) like hunger and fullness from your gastrointestinal tract play a profound role in shaping when you choose to eat. The impact of these gut signals surpasses conventional expectations.
Rely on your gut
Your feelings of hunger and fullness are vital internal cues influencing food-related decisions. To study their impact, researchers trained rats to associate hunger or satiety with food availability. Rats, conditioned to expect food only when hungry, avoided food areas when full. However, injecting rats with the hunger hormone ghrelin increased their visits to the food location, indicating artificial hunger as a guiding interoceptive cue.
Notably, interoceptive states alone shape feeding behaviors, as seen in genetically engineered mice preferring foods based on caloric content despite lacking taste. These findings emphasize the role of internal cues in determining when and where to eat and food preferences.
They also suggest that feelings of hunger and nutrient detection involve key brain areas beyond the stomach, including those related to regulation (like the lateral hypothalamus) and learning and memory (like the hippocampus).
What unfolds in the vagus
The gut-brain axis, the biochemical link between your gut and brain, shapes feeding behaviors through various mechanisms, with a key role played by the vagus nerve.
This cranial nerve, responsible for regulating the digestive tract, swiftly communicates nutrient information to the brain. Activating the vagus nerve induces a pleasurable state, leading mice to engage in behaviors, such as poking their nose through an open port, to stimulate it.
Crucially, mice develop preferences for foods and locations associated with vagal nerve stimulation.
Apart from transmitting digestive signals, the vagus nerve conveys interoceptive signals impacting feelings and behaviors. In humans, stimulating the vagal nerve is linked to improved learning and memory and is utilized as a therapeutic approach for treating major depression.
Advantages of interoceptive awareness
The body’s remarkable ability to use both external and internal cues in regulating food-related learning and decision-making highlights the intricate processes involved in managing energy requirements.
Inadequate interoceptive awareness is associated with various dysfunctional feeding behaviors, including eating disorders. For example, anorexia may result when hunger signals fail to prompt eating, and the inability to use fullness sensations to curb the pleasure of consuming palatable food can lead to binge eating.
Interoceptive signals significantly shape daily eating patterns, especially during challenging periods like the holidays, marked by external stressors. Cultivating a strong connection to these signals becomes crucial, promoting intuitive eating and a holistic approach to dietary habits. This encourages focusing on the moment, savoring each bite, and letting interoceptive signals guide eating behavior naturally.
Do you eat with your eyes, brain or gut conclusion?
Evolution has equipped the brain to sense current energy needs. By integrating these signals with the perception of the food environment, one can optimize energy requirements and fully enjoy the season without fixating on external factors or imposing conditions on eating behavior.
