Hedonic hunger

Hedonic hunger or hedonic hyperphagia is "the drive to eat to obtain pleasure in the absence of an energy deficit." Particular foods may have a high "hedonic rating" or individuals may have increased susceptibility to environmental food cues. Weight loss programs may aim to control or to compensate for hedonic hunger.Therapeutic interventions may influence hedonic eating behavior.

Although hunger may arise from energy or nutrient deficits, as would be expected in the set-point theories of hunger and eating, hunger may arise more commonly from anticipated pleasure of eating, consistent with the positive-incentive perspective. Gramlich distinguished the overeating responses to these stimuli as homeostatic hyperphagia and hedonic hyperphagia respectively. Accordingly, hunger and eating are subject to feedback control from homeostatic, hedonic, and cognitive processes. Although these mechanisms interplay and overlap to some extent, they can nonetheless be individually separated. Thus, the positive-incentive perspective suggests that eating is similar to sexual behavior: humans engage in sexual behavior, not because of an internal deficit, but because they have evolved in a way that makes them crave it. High calorie foods have had intrinsic reward value throughout evolution. The presence of desirable (or "hedonic") food, or the mere anticipation of it, makes one hungry. The psychological effects of hedonic hunger may be the appetitive equivalent of hedonically-driven activities such as recreational drug use and compulsive gambling. Susceptibility to food cues can lead to overeating in a society of readily available calorie dense, inexpensive foods. Such hedonistic eating overrides the body's ability to regulate consumption with satiety.

A related phenomenon, specific appetite, also known as specific hunger, is conceptually related to, but distinct from, hedonic hunger. Specific appetite is a drive to eat foods with specific flavors or other characteristics: in usage, specific appetite has put greater emphasis on an individual who adaptationally learns a particular appetite behavior rather than an evolutionarily innate, hedonic appetite preference.

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