The Hunger Planes

We’ve all heard variations of these two phrases: “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” and “I’m so hungry that if I don’t eat right now, I’m going to implode”. Notice that, while both are specifying a “degree” of hunger, there is a difference in what each of them is attempting to measure. The first phrase is concerned with how much food the person needs to ingest to satisfy their hunger (Quantity), while the second one refers to how quickly the person needs the food (Urgency). I believe that most of us have been using the same term to describe different needs for a long time.

When I was a kid, I remember telling my mom “I’m very hungry”, meaning that I needed to eat immediately. My dear mother then spent what seemed like an eternity to me cooking enough food so I would be satisfied. When it was time to sit down and eat, I quickly put food on my plate, but didn’t necessarily take more than what I would normally eat. My mom then looked at me with a confused aura. “I thought you were hungry” she earnestly said.

It wasn’t that me or my mom misheard each other; it was just that we failed to agree on what I meant by “very hungry”. To address this source of miscommunication, I have created a system called “The Hunger Plane”. It is a simple cartesian plane, with both axes limited to numbers from 1 to 5. The horizontal axis measures how urgently you need food, with 1 being “I don’t really need food right now” and 5 being “If there isn’t something on my plate in the next few minutes someone will pay the ultimate price”. On the other hand, the vertical axis measures…