Question: Would our primitive feelings such as hunger go away eventually as technology improves? when we solve world hunger will we stop feeling hunger as we will always know where our next meal is coming from?

Alex Reid answered on 14 Nov 2018: last edited 14 Nov 2018 10:05 pm

Hi, this is a great question. There are already medical interventions that can suppress hunger. Some of these can involve quite invasive surgery, such as getting your stomach stapled, which makes you feel fuller so you eat less. Some types of drugs, known as anorectics, can also reduce your appetite, and hunger loss is also a side effect of some antidepressants (such as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors also known as SSRIs). This doesn’t solve the problem of world hunger though, these are more interventions for people with an unhealthy amount of weight. To solve world hunger we probably need at least two things beyond the field of psychology: 1. Encourage responsible family planning (i.e. people should not have an excessive amount of children!). This is because the planet can only support so many humans at the moment. Secondly, advanced agricultural technology that can help us sustainably support and feed the 7.5 billion people already living on planet earth (although that number is going up as we speak!).