Valeriia Zaozerska

Every hour, someone in the world dies due to eating related reasons. As food ceases to be just our source of nutrients, the obesity rates and eating disorders continue to rise. According to WHO (World Health Organization), the number of people suffering from obesity has tripled from 1975 to 2016. How does our brain lead us to this? Why can someone eat kilos of spicy food, while someone else immediately gets an upset stomach? In this article, I’ll analyse how our eating habits are forming and why eating disorders rise in numbers.

It all starts with genetics

Each of us likes certain foods and needs different amounts of them. This depends on our metabolism, which is connected to how hunger and satiety centres in the brain function and regulate each other. They’re located in the hypothalamus and record the level of glucose in the blood, the contraction of the stomach walls, and other signals from the body. They tell us: „stop working, time to eat!” or „it’s delicious, but you can’t fit any more in.” Individual difference, of course, play a significant role in this: someone can ignore these signals for a long time, and another person gets angry, irritated and suffers from stomach pain at the slightest pang of hunger. This is influenced by genetic factors, such as mutations in the leptin gene, which helps regulate energy balance by suppressing hunger. It can increase appetite, making a person feel anxious and uncomfortable until they eat. Genetic factors can also affect how the body processes food and burns calories. Some people have a higher Basal Metabolic Rate, which means that they burn more calories at rest. Of course, other things affect appetite too: age, gender, weight, and body composition.

The tastes we like most are also linked to genetics. It has been proven that receptors on our tongue, in the mouth, and throat respond to five types of taste sensations: bitter, sweet, sour, salty, and umami, the last of which is what you sense eating meat or fatty fish. There are other taste sensations, like metallic or chalky, but sensitivity to them hasn’t yet been sufficiently studied.

In addition, sensitivity to tastes depends on the number of receptors for it, which means that it’s also inherited. The genetic predisposition to the perception of bitter taste is best studied. This is how the T2 family of genes determine whether you like black coffee or not. The higher the sensitivity, the more unpleasant bitter products are perceived. We’ll refuse or eat something sweet and dilute them. We’re genetically and evolutionarily programmed to love sweets. Sweet taste means that the food contains carbohydrates and energy, which is why we’re drawn to cakes and pastries: we feel from which products the body can obtain the most nutrients. Bitter and sour tastes, on the other hand, helped us understand that the product is spoiled and dangerous. but as the time passed, we’ve learned through practice which foods are truly dangerous and which only imitate danger.

It turns out that whether someone will prefer natural flavours or dishes seasoned with more pepper and salt is not necessarily inherited directly from their parents. This divergent preference for flavours is best seen in children. Even though their parents choose food for them, kids still have their favourite and least favourite foods. Try it on yourself, what kind of coffee do you like more? Latte with a cookie or double espresso. How about your parents?

Interestingly, a person with sensitivity to bitter tastes will also react strongly to sweet and salty tastes, as well as to alcohol and spicy food, but may make entirely different dietary choices. Genetics only determines sensitivity to certain substances, but not general behaviour patterns. This basis is greatly adjusted throughout life. That’s why some children don’t like meat and prefer fruits, and with age their tastes change. There are also age-related peculiarities in food. You’ve probably noticed that children like sweets more, and that’s perfectly normal. They need a lot of energy and simple carbohydrates is the easiest way to get it.

Research shows a connection between a mother’s diet during pregnancy and what the child will like. It has been proven that if a mother eats many carrots in the last trimester of pregnancy, the newborn will choose carrot-flavoured complementary foods. That’s how we become strawberry and apple lovers.

Overall, the role of genetics in the formation of eating behaviour is very important. Eating disorders develop due to the interaction of many factors: the environment, psychological characteristics and genetic predisposition. If there have been cases of the disorder in the family, the probability of its occurrence is higher. The weight and appetite itself depend among other things on how the leptin metabolism is arranged in the body. This is important to accept because the idea that we’ve complete control over our food choices is a myth. Tackling unhealthy eating habits, it is also necessary to look back at the dietary history of the family.

Psychology of eating habits

When it comes to one’s diet, psychological and social factors are as important as physiology and genetics. A person is born without in-built dietary plans, only with some preferences. Their further relationship with food will be greatly influenced by social factors. Imagine that everyone in your family loves chili peppers, of course you’ll eat them too even if it seems too spicy to you at first. Over time, your pain receptors will adapt and become less sensitive, and the same thing happens with your taste receptors.

Of course, the attitude towards food in the family may be a direct cause of an eating disorder. Let’s say that a mother thinks that food is evil because it’ll make you put on extra kilos. The child is bound to also worry about nutrition to the point where their risk of developing anorexia or bulimia may increase several times.

Moreover, food is inextricably linked with emotions. Getting food is one of the main tasks of survival, so the body rewards us for eating the food it that would improve our chances of survival, which is mostly carbohydrates. That’s why our mood improves when we eat chocolate. The same thing happens with products that contain glutamate, which is mostly found in high-protein foods or as an additive to other products and whose presence is indicated by umami taste. Protein-rich food is necessary for a person to renew all tissues and organs. Therefore, the brain also rewards us with a good mood for tasty meat. Often food performs the function of regulating emotions. For example, we eat when we’re sad or anxious. The experience of anxiety is similar to the feeling of hunger. Sweet and warm food creates a surge of oxytocin, the hormone of trust and attachment. Nostalgia and cooking shows also influence eating habits. Certain types of food are linked to our memories and we attach special meaning to them. Thus, the smell and taste of tangerines send us back to memories of winter days and holidays, or hot dumplings plunge us into the arms of our beloved grandmother.

Food is strongly connected with smells and this memory is the most stable. You remember how newly bought books smelled, or what perfume the person you’re in love with uses. Smell and taste associations make us choose certain types of food, and so do emotional connections we have with it, which is why food is strongly associated with events, seasons, and memories. Fresh berries mean summer, and warm hot chocolate is what we think of when we imagine rainy autumn.

Finally, we get used to certain tastes, which has everything to do with the mechanism of habit formation, which is based on neural connections. The strength of a habit depends on how many neurotransmitters reinforce it. The more often we repeat something, the more we get used to it.

For modern person, food carries a lot of meaning, and what needs we satisfy with it influence our choice of food: a croissant to feel the magic of the morning, a cake to celebrate a birthday, avocado toast to demonstrate your commitment to healthy eating. It’s not all going to be about satiating hunger. but it will depend on which of the multiple roles that food plays in our any particular situation is all about. The important thing is to approach the issue of nutrition consciously.

How to Form Healthy Eating Habits

To consciously form eating habits, you need to develop sensitivity to hunger and satiety. Sometimes, while working or watching a TV series, we don’t notice that we’re hungry, or, on the contrary, that we overeat our favourite snacks. When we’re focused on something, we tend not to be able to control our eating. At first, we ignore hunger for a long time, and then we eat as if it was our last meal. The best way to avoid such situations is to take a break from everything while eating and monitor your body sensations.

It’s also important to understand our own attitudes towards food. Maybe as a child you were told that there is good and bad food, and that you cannot have dinner after 6pm, or you were scolded for eating very carelessly. Look critically at your attitudes towards food and maybe you’ll find something that is a problem for you. What we believe about food often makes us limit what we eat too much or overeat and feel ashamed of it. It may prevent you from being able to to relax and form comfortable eating habits for yourself. Cook from what brings you pleasure and helps to be full.

Try to answer the question: what functions does food perform in your life besides satisfying hunger? Maybe you eat to concentrate or not to worry, or you simply can’t pass by a beautiful, delicious-smelling pastry from a bakery. This is what is called external eating. When we see food that looks nice or smells delicious, we eat without thinking whether or not we’re really hungry, and maybe what we actually need is to be in a pleasant company.

You can develop a habit of eating a certain type of food, but first check why you do it. It is great if it is due to rational beliefs about food, but you shouldn’t resort to exclusionary diets excessively because they’re often the beginning of eating disorders. You might want to use these three steps to form a healthy dietary habit: goal awareness, trigger, and multiple repetitions.

First, figure out why you want to eat what you want to eat: is it for pleasure, for health, or for beauty? The second step is to attach the habit to some trigger: time, place, or circumstances. You might want to have breakfast immediately after waking up, drink water during breaks at school or work, and have lunch exactly at 12:00. The connection must be unambiguous and clear, like the light bulb for dogs in Pavlov’s experiments. This is how we form a conditioned reflex. Lastly, the third step is regularity. If possible, do the action every day and it’ll stick. If you’ve heard that a habit is formed in 21 days, then forget it because it’s a myth. In reality, you may actually need anywhere from 56 to even 100 days. It all depends on the complexity of the habit, but regularity always wins over super efforts.

     What regulates our eating behaviour is a very complex mechanism. It all depends on genetics, upbringing and environment, hostile factors, and cultural and personal characteristics. Our food choices are our own; therefore, it’s important to rely not only on what everyone considers healthy, but also on your own feelings. For example, on what specific taste you want to feel during lunch. Perhaps your body has been lacking energy for a long time and delicious pastries will be very welcome.

Our appetite and sensitivity to different tastes depend on genetics, among other things. Some people can’t stand sweets; others can’t stand salty or bitter. Don’t forget about your genes when you make up your diet. It’s important to consider congenital factors too. Maybe if your mother ate pears a lot during pregnancy, you’ll be delighted with them too. Food and emotions are closely related, so it’s worth conducting an analysis and finding out what emotional states you regulate with the help of food. A specialist, for example a psychologist, can help you with this.

There is no good or bad food. Any food contains important micro and macro elements, so form eating habits out of self-care, not spite.