Hedonic Hunger: Why Your Brain Encourages You To Eat for Fun

Here’s why you crave eating even when you know you’re not hungry— and the risk of doing so

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We’re living in a world where food is always around — brightly packaged, algorithmically marketed, and engineered to be irresistible. And yet, most of us don’t eat because we’re actually hungry. We eat because we want to.

I call it eating for fun.

I've just returned from an all-inclusive holiday with my family. There was food available 24/7 (literally). And it wasn’t just any food; it was almost every type of food you could possibly imagine. Burgers, fries, salads, pizza, pasta, rice, curries, crepes, donuts, cake — You name it.

I’m a very health-conscious individual with a master’s degree in nutrition. I, nonetheless, ate about 10 Nutella crepes a day, #noragrets. I was eating for fun, i.e., I was aware that I wasn't hungry, so I opted to just enjoy the food a little bit more.

Is this a healthy approach?

That’s debatable.

Perhaps it’s okay if it’s a rare thing for you to do (a birthday or holiday, for example). However, this may not be the case, as it can confuse your body’s natural hunger and satiety cues, which may have a longer-term…