There are many mechanisms that fall under the heading of 'appetite', and all can become deranged in ways proper to themselves: PUFAs, emulsifiers, hidden sugars, comfort eating, impoverished gut microbiome, inflammatory factors, highly palatable foods, yo-yo dieting metabolism, you name it.
Yeah, bad news about the way the human brain is constructed. There aren't really actually any categories and all kinds of shit overlaps. See for instance one cogent theory about how the neurons responsible for the mental map of one's feet being directly adjacent to those for the genitalia creates foot fetishes. Comfort eating makes sense in a similar way. If you watch some prey animal get startled a little while eating, for instance, you'll notice it stops chewing until it feels safe again. Most signaling appears to be bidirectional and it is quite possible that chewing makes people feel like they are safe. Distending one's gut also makes it send signals to the brain expressing something like "we just finished a feast, it's time to rest and digest." These two factors combined are apparently enough to cause some people to eat chunks of foam out of their mattresses. And that's just two. Consider how a rush of insulin makes a person feel, or how there might be a psychological association between food and comfort if one's parents only ever provided care in the form of snacks. People who were groomed and molested as children often report not feeling comfortable without an armor of fat shielding them from gazes that might lead to sexual targeting. There are more examples, but those are the only ones that come to the top of my mind at the moment.
> People who were groomed and molested as children often report not feeling comfortable without an armor of fat shielding them from gazes that might lead to sexual targeting.
Sure, and that doesn't seem too unreasonable.
But people who want to get laid often report that they'd really like to lose weight so that other people will find them hotter and sexually target them, and that doesn't make them lose their appetites, or lead to uncontrollable comfort fasting, as far as I can see.
> If you watch some prey animal get startled a little while eating, for instance, you'll notice it stops chewing until it feels safe again.
Could that possibly be because it's a good idea to stop eating and keep an eye out for predators if something has startled you?
> bad news about the way the human brain is constructed.
For sure the newer parts of our minds are some wretched hack job, but I tend to think that the ancient systems that have undergone extensive field testing and revision should at least work well in the conditions for which they were designed.
And I'd be a little surprised if the stress of predation caused animals to eat so that they could feel less anxious and ignore their predators.
Nothing about human existence is much like the conditions for which we were designed. Animals don't comfort-eat (unless made neurotic by being pets), but the pathways exist to allow humans to comfort themselves by chewing. There's also a ton of nerves going from teeth near-direct to the brain.
Anyway, none of the things I've said are at all controversial. They are just examples to show that what one person means by appetite might be quite different from what you mean.
There are many mechanisms that fall under the heading of 'appetite', and all can become deranged in ways proper to themselves: PUFAs, emulsifiers, hidden sugars, comfort eating, impoverished gut microbiome, inflammatory factors, highly palatable foods, yo-yo dieting metabolism, you name it.
> comfort eating
See this, this has always puzzled me. Why would eating be comforting if you're not hungry?
When I'm sad I find cigars comforting. Food? That's some sort of category error. Like trying to fix a flat tyre by putting more petrol in the tank.
Yeah, bad news about the way the human brain is constructed. There aren't really actually any categories and all kinds of shit overlaps. See for instance one cogent theory about how the neurons responsible for the mental map of one's feet being directly adjacent to those for the genitalia creates foot fetishes. Comfort eating makes sense in a similar way. If you watch some prey animal get startled a little while eating, for instance, you'll notice it stops chewing until it feels safe again. Most signaling appears to be bidirectional and it is quite possible that chewing makes people feel like they are safe. Distending one's gut also makes it send signals to the brain expressing something like "we just finished a feast, it's time to rest and digest." These two factors combined are apparently enough to cause some people to eat chunks of foam out of their mattresses. And that's just two. Consider how a rush of insulin makes a person feel, or how there might be a psychological association between food and comfort if one's parents only ever provided care in the form of snacks. People who were groomed and molested as children often report not feeling comfortable without an armor of fat shielding them from gazes that might lead to sexual targeting. There are more examples, but those are the only ones that come to the top of my mind at the moment.
> People who were groomed and molested as children often report not feeling comfortable without an armor of fat shielding them from gazes that might lead to sexual targeting.
Sure, and that doesn't seem too unreasonable.
But people who want to get laid often report that they'd really like to lose weight so that other people will find them hotter and sexually target them, and that doesn't make them lose their appetites, or lead to uncontrollable comfort fasting, as far as I can see.
> See for instance one cogent theory
A fellow SSC reader, by any chance?
> If you watch some prey animal get startled a little while eating, for instance, you'll notice it stops chewing until it feels safe again.
Could that possibly be because it's a good idea to stop eating and keep an eye out for predators if something has startled you?
> bad news about the way the human brain is constructed.
For sure the newer parts of our minds are some wretched hack job, but I tend to think that the ancient systems that have undergone extensive field testing and revision should at least work well in the conditions for which they were designed.
And I'd be a little surprised if the stress of predation caused animals to eat so that they could feel less anxious and ignore their predators.
Nothing about human existence is much like the conditions for which we were designed. Animals don't comfort-eat (unless made neurotic by being pets), but the pathways exist to allow humans to comfort themselves by chewing. There's also a ton of nerves going from teeth near-direct to the brain.
Anyway, none of the things I've said are at all controversial. They are just examples to show that what one person means by appetite might be quite different from what you mean.
> They are just examples to show that what one person means by appetite might be quite different from what you mean.
And I thank you for them. You've already broadened my mind with a single gallon of ice-cream. Keep it up!