Are you ever really hungry?

Are You Really Hungry?

Have you ever really been hungry? Hopefully not, because hunger is a dangerous thing which is why we resist it so much despite our abundant lives. Today in America only 1 of 50 states can boast that less than 30 % of citizens are overweight. We clearly eat enough, yet we still worry about hunger and resist it.

What is hunger and how does it feel? There are many kinds of hunger. There is true physical hunger or starvation. There is emotional hunger, a growling stomach hunger, a low blood sugar hunger and hunger for the next meal. Hunger pangs are triggered by the sight and smell of cooking soups or baked bread. They are triggered by habit and time and place. Hunger is triggered by memory and thirst. Sorting it out is crucial to knowing what you need and how much. Determining bad habits, changing them and curbing behaviors is key. Knowing the difference between thirst, emotional hunger and stomach pains helps.

Here are a few facts to ponder. First, in America most of us are over nourished rather than undernourished. Second many times when we know we have eaten enough but still feel hungry we might be thirsty. As well, emotional hunger is a strong pull to overeat, but as we eat our bodies adjust making more stomach juices and readying the system for more to come. Each time we overeat we get better at overeating. Finally, when our blood sugar drops as they do for most of us once in a while, a simple snack of only 10 calories will decrease symptoms. If you are prediabetic or diabetic balancing this mechanism is far more complicated requiring insulin injections or medications to help sugars into the cells.

Hunger is okay once in a while. It is good for our appetites. Food tastes better when we are hungry. Eating is more pleasurable on an empty stomach. So, when you overeat and feel full remember this pain and think of hunger as the reward. There is plenty of food out there waiting to be eaten.

Hunger in America?

Will hunger be the next big issue in America? Malnourished obese parents raising malnourished anemic children, hungry for nutrients and eating plastic foods high in saturated fats. Palm kernal oil and coconut butter filling foods, high fructose corn syrup filling grocery shelves and making us sick when we eat them. We won't be skinny hungry people, but really fat hungry people. Diabetics eating sugar and peeing sugar that can't nourish cells. Sugars stuck behind a wall of fat blocking nouishment. Hunger persists though fat overwhelmingly impeeds the process. But hunger could also look different. We could have bread lines and food scarcities and protein malnutrition. We see this elsewhere in the world without looking very hard. Micheal Pollan and others want to change the farm bill to support small farmers and locally grown foods. Our artificially cheap food impacts our health, land, and animals. Let's consider an agricultural policy that highlights public-health and environmental values. A bill that in Michael Pollen's words has "incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely." We the people must feed our people better than we have. With Obama in the Whitehouse, we can get working on it.