Eating in the Era of Bounty and Thinness

Hunger and fullness cues used to be dictated by accessible resources and life demands. These cues were necessary to function in the world. With access to unlimited food and societal pressures around food and body, many other judgments affect what and when we eat.

Recent decades ushered in an era of plentiful food, more than anyone could have imagined, at least in the richer countries of the world. The food industry brought about a transformation in accessible foods from the transportation of fresh foods, a plethora of frozen foods and access to prepared foods. For those people privileged enough to have money and access, the abundance of food is extraordinary.

In addition, many jobs changed from manual labor to sedentary work in the past few generations. Without regular physical activity at work, people are able to rest and choose what and how they eat each and every day.

Our bodies, however, developed a metabolism to survive very different settings. We feel hunger much more acutely than fullness and expect to exist mostly in need of food, not around an endless bounty.

As a result, we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about what to eat, when to eat it and how we are supposed to eat. Combine these circumstances with the societal values about body weight and size and it’s a wonder we are able to do anything other than obsess about food and weight.

Honestly, many people, even those without eating disorders, do spend much of their mental energy on food and weight.

The incidence of eating disorders has skyrocketed under these circumstances. The lockdown during the pandemic revealed that with more empty time in our lives, eating disorders continue to rise.

The situation that led to so much focus on food and accordingly eating disorders isn’t about to change. And the way our metabolism functions won’t change either. We are left with a simple question: how to manage hunger and food in this world?

I’m going to use the next few posts to address this question.