What is it about food that makes us want to eat it?

What circuits are triggered when we look at the foods we like?

How do the sensory properties of food influence our choices of what to eat?

There are no simple answers for this complex function. What follows is just a piece of the mechanism. There are different models, each with its own perspective. The different models are due to the complexity of the food attraction mechanism.

A traditional way to explain food attraction is called the Hedonic model. The suggestion here is that food is associated with pleasure. Anything that makes you feel good, in any way, you will want to keep doing, and even want to do it more. That is basic psychology. Anything that has given you pleasure in the past will probably be attractive in the present. The greater the pleasure, the greater that magnetic pull, whether you have eaten enough or not.

It appears that at least some foods can even trigger an unregulated craving for more calories.

There are things about the food itself that can result in overconsumption. The name for those things is called the Orosensory properties of foods. These involve the experience of the food in the mouth. The experience is a combination of the taste of the food, the texture of the food, and even the temperature of the food. If all these things please you, and you throw in a nice fragrance, the potential for overeating is in place, but it does not have to happen.

There is research that shows that how palatable food is can affect what a person eats, but it cannot by itself account for how much he or she eats. It does turn out that the influence of how much you like a certain food can fade over time.

Early research found that the way animals regulate how much they eat is based on the food’s nutritional value, not taste. Later research found that flavors can be associated with nutritional value. We learn to desire foods that combine flavor and good nutritional value. This association between flavor and nutrition is something that we learn over time. Psychologists call this classical conditioning, or the principle of association.

Again, this pertains to the properties of the food and what you eat, not how much you eat. If you eat too much and over-consume, that is your fault. You can’t blame it on the food. This nutritional eating mechanism is separate from the hedonic eating for pleasure model. It is a parallel factor involved in food intake.

Of the two aspects of food that trigger food consumption, one is conscious and one is unconscious. The hedonic/pleasure trigger is conscious, and we clearly recognize how pleasurable a particular food is. The flavor-nutritional aspect of food is a parallel but unconscious factor also at work, influencing food consumption.

For those who may be interested, the part of the brain that is involved in picking up on the flavor/nutritional food preference is believed to be the insular cortex. It is involved in turning the awareness of inner body feelings, the signals that come from the body’s internal organs, into conscious perception. It is the major player in the flavor-nutrient learning mechanism.

In a nutshell, the characteristics of different foods are a major factor in the choice of which foods we choose to eat. Those characteristics affect what we eat, not how much we eat. The two forces that work together to influence how we pick what food to eat come from the food itself.

The conscious palatability and the unconscious nutritive value of the food are a team. How you handle and respond to those forces is your choice.

— Dr. Joseph Switras provides clinical psychological services at United Health District in Fairmont to people age 5 and up.