Nutritionist Sarah Di Lorenzo explains hedonic eating: Why humans are driven by food cravings

Hedonic eating is the drive to eat for pleasure, in simple terms.

The name comes from the Greek goddess of pleasure Hedone.

Many of you probably have not heard of ‘hedonic hunger’ but it is a contributing factor to our obesity epidemic.

Hedonic hunger is a person’s preoccupation with and desire to eat foods for the purpose of pleasure and in the absence of physical hunger.

Hedonic foods are not healthy whole foods rather they are chocolates, lollies, crips and icecream — all of the foods linked to sensory pleasure, that are nutrient poor or devoid of nutrients completely and calorie dense.

But why is the drive for hedonic eating so strong in us as humans that it is causing us so many health issues?

Well you need to look back at the human body to tens of thousands of years ago when we had a strong biological drive to eat and store calories, at a time where food could be scarce.

Back to a time where our life expectancy was around 30 and we had little or no food.

For early humans sweet high energy foods were rare, foods like dates, fruit and honey — unlike sweets today.

When early humans found these foods, the reward system in the brain told them to keep eating them to store and to avoid starvation.

When the human body burns more calories than consumed our body will accelerate appetite and slow down messaging we are full basically making more of our hunger hormone Ghrelin.

This is homeostasis and is well controlled by our gut and brain but when it comes to pleasure or hedonic eating this is an entirely different and separated urge linked to the reward centre in our brain which is also linked to addiction.

The thing is today, hedonic eating is one of the biggest drivers of obesity, the availability of sugary, fatty, salty, fried calorie dense food is just a message, app or call away.

Hedonic eating is linked to dopamine release.

Sugary foods in particular fill the brain with dopamine, once we trigger the dopamine we just keep seeking it out, we get hit after hit of dopamine with every sweet bite we take.

This urge can be linked to addiction to alcohol or heroin, the drive is so strong.

Ultra processed foods now make up now a large percentage of the western diet — around 60 per cent — and these foods include the sugary breakfast cereals, fruit juices, white breads, pizzas, soft drinks and chips.

The thing is, our body today is still what it was thousands of years ago where we needed extra calories to store, and as humans, our bodies are just doing what they were doing then, craving high calorie foods and storing them.

Think about how hedonic eating is so hard to control in modern life.

The hard thing with hedonic eating is we are eating for pleasure and the off switch is hard to find.

The areas in our brain that help with regulating our hunger and eating cues also signal the release of dopamine.

This makes us feel so good and positively reinforces eating and it is all about our survival as a species.

How can we beat hedonic eating?

Well the first part is with education, understanding what it is and being able to recognise this in yourself.

I tell my patients that food is nutrition and to find our dopamine for non-food related sources.

That food is no longer a reward and to only eat what is good for our health.

Be aware of the food industry, marketing ploys and promises — this is a billion dollar industry.

Learn to understand that food can be an addiction and to think about if it impacts you.

You have the power to make a choice for real and healthy food and have the power to choose what you do and don’t want to do for your health.

Listen to your body, not advertising of nutrient poor, calorie dense, foods.

Understand if you have any triggers that could be emotional and find a different way of managing these feelings outside of hedonic eating.

One of my biggest tips is to have your meal plan and preparation in place so there are no excuses such as “I had no food at home”.

Consider keeping a journal to understand your behaviour further.

This is also a great way to work out what your triggers are.

Most of all, finding a plan that will work for you can stop hedonic eating and the sabotaging of your health, and you can go on to live a wonderful healthy nutrient dense life.

It takes effort but it is worth it.