This short segment (Episode 3) explains that humans experience multiple "hungers" beyond physiological hunger; the speaker identifies a third hunger—variety—and traces it to an evolved instinct encouraging dietary diversity to obtain necessary nutrients. He argues modern food environments offer excessive variety, which increases consumption, and recommends recognizing variety as an emotional need and fulfilling it through non-food activities to reduce overeating and improve food quality.
Chapters
So why do we eat? I mean, why do you eat? Do you eat because you're hungry? I want to suggest that we have a whole lot of reasons for eating, and they actually often don't have much to do with hunger at all. The third kind of hunger, variety. We want variety on a daily basis. No, in fact, we want variety on our plate. We want to go to a buffet and have a little bit of everything. We want so much variety. But where does that come from? It comes from a very smart instinct that humans have, and this is the way it worked. Bear in mind that our ancestors lived in Mother Nature for the vast majority of our history, and that meant that the foods that were available were the ones that were out there, seasonally available. And so if you were eating one plant, for example, because it was available and you're eating too much of it, you might be getting too much of what that plant delivers, but not enough of other things. And so your body would generate a desire for variety to make sure that you ate a variety of different things, to get all of your vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats solved. So what we get now is way too much variety. And here's one thing you can do about it. When you start feeling a need for new variety in terms of your food, you can recognize that variety is an emotional need. And so you can seek out other forms of variety in your life, other forms of entertainment and adventure, and satisfy that variety emotionally, and then you won't need to satisfy it on your plate. When you feel these hungers, it's almost too late. So if you address them in advance, then they won't have power over you. Neutralize the six hungers, and then you'll find yourself eating less, but more importantly, eating more good, quality food as well. Sam.
