Why is eating so taboo?

"The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself." - Anthony Bourdain

Are you hungry or are you thirsty?

Are you hungry or are you bored?

Are you hungry or are you tired?

And if you are hungry, have you tried ignoring it completely?

It is not lost on me how the concept of eating is treated as a taboo subject. You can Google how to suppress your hunger and there will be hundreds of options on the search engine. We are told that we can’t possibly be hungry as much as we are. We eat too much and are too consumed with food all the time apparently. Not to mention that we are also told that we have too many options of foods, AKA processed foods, available to us which is why we are always hungry and eat too much. Funny enough we never talk about why we need processed foods and that we live in a society that requires processed foods and there are many processed foods that are in fact nutritious, but I digress. (Don’t worry a post on processed foods is coming)

Here’s the thing, we need food in order to survive. And I know this sounds like a very “duh” thing to say but I truly believe that we forget this sometimes. If we truly recognized that we needed to eat, why do we constantly see so much rhetoric telling us otherwise? We are told that we are bored, thirsty, tired, stressed, and not at all really hungry. And don’t get me wrong we can indeed also be these things, but we can also be hungry. I talked about how food represents so many different aspects and is not limited to just providing nutrients, but what if I also told you that there are also different types of hunger?

You may have heard of different types of hunger, from many sources as there are many different ideas on this concept. If you are familiar with the anti diet space, you might recognize the names Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, the registered dietitians and authors who put Intuitive Eating on the map, who also talk about this concept. But what do these concepts mean? *Disclaimer - I am not a certified Intuitive Eating counselor for personal reasons I have chosen and will talk about at another time, but I still respect the concepts*

Physical Hunger

This is what most people think of when they think of the word “hunger.” The feelings of a growling stomach, headaches, tiredness, brain fog, having trouble concentrating, and of course just being hangry, probably come to mind. This is what we most recognize and acknowledge and most of us who feel these symptoms, then go about finding some food to feed ourselves. This is the type of hunger that is the most acknowledged and the one where we are told “it’s okay to eat now”. But alas, there are others.

Taste Hunger

Think about a time when you weren’t physically hungry but still wanted food. Of course this happens and we’re told that this feeling is wrong, but why should it be? Was there a time that you smelled your roommate, friend, spouse, or whoever cooking or baking and you were eager to try a bite because it smelled so delicious? Yes, I think we’ve all been there. You aren’t hungry but a certain food, at a certain time, sounds good and you want to eat. Usually when this happens, we might mutter, “I’m being so bad right now” or “No, I shouldn’t”. This is when diet culture comes into the picture, continually telling us we’re bad for eating.

Emotional Hunger

Of all the different hunger categories, this one is the one that’s probably the most demonized by society. “Stop eating your feelings” we’re told. Emotional hunger is eating to satisfy an emotional need and many folks assign moral value (“I’m bad for eating xyz”) to emotional eating. I’m about to say something shocking in that eating to satisfy emotional needs is not an inherently bad thing. Food is many things and one of those things is comfort. Now, do I believe that food should be the only form of comfort? No. But it can be a way to cope with emotions short term. This isn’t inherently wrong and I think we need to stop demonizing this in society. 

Practical Hunger

There are times when my day is going to be full of errands (yes that includes Target). And because I know that I’ll be running around all day and also knowing that there aren’t going to be a ton of choices to grab food, I eat beforehand. Am I hungry when I’m eating before the errands? No, not always, especially in the mornings. However, this is what practical hunger is, we need to eat even in the absence of our hunger cues because we might not have a chance to eat again for a while. This is incredibly important for those who take medications that suppress their appetites and need to still eat, when we are stressed and aren’t hungry but still need to eat, and/or those who have hectic schedules and are on the go. One past client was a newscaster, and she “lived in a van” chasing stories all day. Stopping to eat was far and few between so we had to work on eating, even when she wasn’t physically hungry.

So now what do we do with this information? Well for starters, it’s going to take time to undo society’s teaching of “it’s wrong to eat food”. My advice is to give yourself not only permission to eat in the forms of any of these types of hunger, but also to give yourself grace. Being a human is hard and one of the things that can make it extremely difficult, is not trusting ourselves. No, it’s not as easy as “just listen to your body”, because our body sometimes malfunctions under certain conditions, but we can recognize that we are human and imperfect. In fact, there is no such thing as perfect eating. I personally don’t believe in perfection as a whole, but I know for a fact that perfect eating doesn’t exist. And guess what? That is more than okay. We can do, what works for us, and in finding that, make a few stumbles along the way. But one thing is for sure, we need food, and it doesn’t just have to be limited just for survival.

This is what happens when we’re hangry. This is why we should eat.