Factors determining food intake

There are few factors determining the food intake, and we should be aware of them if we want to follow a diet successfully.

1. Sensory factors - sensory properties of a meal (combination of taste, smell, sight and even sound). We eat more of what we like and less of what we do not. Chefs are experts in optimizing the sensory aspect of any food.

2. Social factors - much of what we eat is determined by our culture, and people with different background can possess different culinary customs. Social settings are also underlined, as we eat more in company of others than we eat alone (food made for social bonding as barbecue and food made to celebrate special events as birthday cake). Social factors can override physiology (thousands of calories on our Christmas dinner for example). If you try to improve dietary habits, the social settings can be an impediment towards your goal.

3. Psyhological factors - losing appetite when stressed or eating for comfort (increasing the food intake due to emotional eating is a major cause of weight gain).

4. Physiological factors - our physiological needs dictate the food choice The desire for food is driven by the evolutionary need to supply our bodies with nutrients and energy in order to survive. There are complicated feedback mechanisms (long term and short term) leading to hunger sensation an food seeking behavior when food intake and energy levels drop. On long term, the energy intake will always match perfectly the energy expediture, proving the existence of overriding physiological feedback mechanisms that resist to large fluctuations in body weight.

I will try to put all this in some coherent post about the feedback regulation of the food intake and, as an added bonus, also about feedback regulation of the adipose tissue (fat). Hope you will enjoy it.

Talk to you soon!

G.