• Question: why do we get hungry?

    Asked by asiansupreme to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Good question 🙂

      At an evolutionary level – we get hungry because we need to eat to survive. Without food we would not get all the nutrients we need to move, make new cells, repair ourselves etc.- we would not be able to live. So the drive to eat (hunger) is important because it makes us take in these nutrients.

      On a more individual level you get hungry because of changes in a couple of hormones:
      ghrelin makes you want to eat
      leptin makes you not want to eat

      So different levels of these hormones will determine how hungry you feel.

      Does that answer your question?

    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Because all of the body’s cells need nutrients to grow. They need amino acids to make more proteins (these are the building blocks of the cell, and its machinery too) which we get by digestion of protein in your diet. They also need sugars (glucose) to fuel the reactions that take place in all the cells, which we get from the digestion of starches and from directly ingesting sugar. Being hungry is a way for the body to remind us that we need to take in some food, but it is quite complicated – as Emma says, hunger is tightly regulated by the production of hormones, which are released based on feedback from many different parts of the body.

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