Why are we fatter today on average than our predecessors?
Answer: because we eat more and move less.
But why do we eat more? Because our Western diet is based more on satisfying the munchies than in response to our actual hunger. Today I will explain how the munchies, the nervous hunger, the urge to eat excessively and without realizing it arise.

According to Dr Stephane Guyenet , a neurobiologist and researcher on obesity-related issues, the reasons lie in the human brain , a real command station that responds to external (environmental) impulses with internal impulses: not just this degree of adaptation. with the environment it is implemented in order to survive, but physiology and behavior also depend on our brain. For example, the brain adapts to environmental responses, regulates our internal energy metabolism based on those, our digestive metabolism and consequently our way of eating.

Think about when it’s cold: the temperature (external factor) determines a metabolic change that produces more heat in the body (internal factor, in this case of thermogenic regulation), and all this information is filtered and processed to choose the right behavior food: eating things that are hot, but also more caloric, in order to warm us up.
By what mechanism do external and internal impulses affect our way of eating and make us fat?
Once the external impulses are registered, a part of our brain releases substances (chemical mediators) that will influence our way of eating, among other things, determining precise actions.

For example, it releases dopamine . Which has a fundamental role in pushing us to choose food as a means of comfort / reward (reward): for example, my boyfriend gives up and I choke on ice cream while I howl at the moon and look at Bridget Jones for the hundredth time;
the boss shoots me a cazziatone and I strafio on pizza and chips along with the wine to cheer me up;
I get an important job offer and I’m happy and I say to myself, well, today we eat out to celebrate!
Can we say that ice cream, pizza and dinner out are useful strategies to nourish us?
No, they are eating behaviors that stem from how the brain reacts to the environment. The more frustrated, pissed off, emotional, competitive, etc. we are, the more these compensation strategies shouldn’t be new to us. But what happens next?

Our “chemical” hunger is addressed to foods that the body ancestral seeks as an extra energy: starchy foods, foods with glutamate (umami taste, generally cheeses and products with monosodium glutamate fall into this category), foods rich in simple sugars, foods rich in salt and foods dense in calories (peanut butter), non-bitter foods (therefore sweet or salty) . In short, something that according to the body can give that extra substance we need to balance the effect of the outside world on us but also the effect in general of these chemical mediators.