When we bring our mindfulness to bear on what we call “hunger,” we discover it isn’t just one thing. Hunger is made up of many different kinds of signals that arise from our senses, thoughts, and emotions. It’s a mix of experiences stemming from having a human body, mind, and heart.
Learning to recognize the nine different types of hunger helps us understand what we’re truly needing in a given moment. In this way, mindfulness helps us respond with more wisdom and less autopilot.
1. Eye Hunger
I was pulled toward the window of a bakery. Eclairs oozing cream filling, lemon tarts topped with raspberries, flaky croissants stuffed with almond paste. I’d just eaten dinner; my stomach was full, but my eyes said, “We have room for one of those, well, maybe two. And let’s take a third home for tomorrow!” My eyes were bigger than my stomach.
To become aware of eye hunger, pause and take your food in visually. Notice colors, textures, shapes, and the arrangement on the plate. What appeals to you? When you go to a restaurant, notice what catches your eye on the menu.
2. Nose Hunger
The smell of freshly baked bread made me decide to add a baguette to my shopping list. Soon, the fragrance wafted out of the paper bag and, although I was full, I couldn’t resist pulling a piece off to eat.
The smells of fresh bread, coffee, grilled meat, cinnamon, and soup are among the most potent exciters of nose hunger. Before you begin to eat, smell your food, and then, as you eat, notice whether the smell is stronger on the in-breath or the out-breath. This will help you become aware of nose hunger.
3. Touch Hunger
Touch hunger is about the texture of food, the feel of it. Our tongue is extremely sensitive to textures. We expect crackers to be crisp and pudding to be smooth. Food manufacturers have learned the appeal of combining textures, such as pairing ice cream with crunchy nuts.
In many cultures, people eat with their hands. They claim it makes the food taste better. Try eating with your hands. Ethiopian restaurants are a good place to start. You tear bits of injera, a spongy flatbread, and use them to scoop up an assortment of delicious stews.
4. Ear Hunger
Part of our enjoyment of eating comes from the sounds we hear. One company received complaints from their customers about how the chocolate coating on their ice cream bars kept falling off. The company altered the coating so it would stay on, but then people complained that when they bit into the bar, the chocolate no longer made the distinct cracking sound they loved. The company returned to the noisy coating.
Pause for a few minutes and listen to the music of eating. Listen as if you were listening to a symphony on a foreign planet. Are there sounds of percussion, bits of melody, high or low notes? Just listen.
5. Mouth Hunger
What tastes delicious to us depends on genetics and cultural traditions. Some people enjoy very spicy food, while others find that when their mouth is on fire they cannot taste anything.
Because most of what we describe as “taste” is actually smell, it’s important to know that the tongue can only detect broad categories of flavor: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.
Before eating, rate your mouth hunger on a scale of one (not interested) to ten (can’t wait to eat it all). Look at the food on your plate and ask your mouth what it’s most interested in tasting. As you eat that food, be aware of when the intensity of the flavor sensations begins to wane—on the third bite, or the fifth? When does the mouth become bored with that food and want a change? Stop eating for a minute and give the nerve endings in your mouth and nose time to recover their sensitivity.
6. Stomach Hunger
Our stomachs don’t have taste buds. Stomachs operate on volume. The delicious tastes that the mouth relishes disappear when the food moves down to the stomach. Then, frequently, the mouth wants to eat more—and more—which can easily become too much.
Our stomach signals its condition to us through stretch receptors. Food is something the stomach has to work on, sometimes for hours, after we get up from the table. Many people eat until their stomach feels uncomfortably full. Okinawans, some of the longest-lived people in the world, recommend hara hachi bu, which means “eight parts full” (eight out of ten, or just four-fifths full). A Japanese proverb says the first four-fifths sustain the person, and the last fifth sustains the doctor.
When you sit down to eat, bring awareness to your stomach. (It’s right under the bottom ribs.) How full is it now? Empty, a quarter full, half full, three-quarters full, full, or overfull? Then ask your stomach what volume of food it would be comfortable with: a cup, a cup and a half, two cups, three? Serve yourself accordingly. Halfway through eating, pause and connect with your stomach again. How much more volume would it prefer?
When you finish eating what you served yourself, check again. Don’t worry if you under- or overestimated. This takes practice.
7. Cellular Hunger
When we were very young, we ate by following messages from our cells. In the 1930s a pediatrician did an experiment with infants who’d not yet eaten solid food. An assortment of thirty-five simple, unprocessed foods was offered on their highchair trays, including raw fruits, raw and cooked vegetables, beef, chicken, fish, eggs, and bone marrow. One day the infants might have eaten only peas, but over the course of a week they ate as if guided by an inner nutritionist.
Ordinarily we notice cellular hunger in extreme conditions: when we’re dehydrated and crave water, when we’ve sweated a lot and crave salt, or when we’ve been sick and are beginning, carefully, to eat again.
One way to become more sensitive to cellular hunger is to go to a supermarket when you’re not hungry. Stroll through the outer aisles, where the less processed foods are, and pause frequently to notice individual food items—perhaps fresh tomatoes or slabs of fish. Tune in to your body and ask it, “Is this something that you need?” If we were as tuned in to cellular hunger as the babies in the experiment, we’d eat bananas when our cells needed potassium, chocolate when they needed magnesium, and eggs when we needed protein or iron.
8. Mind Hunger
Mind hunger is based on thoughts about food, including information, numbers, instructions, and criticism. For example:
• “You should drink twelve glasses of water a day.”
• “Eating animal fat will give you a heart attack.”
• “The paleo diet is best, lots of protein!”
• “You shouldn’t ever eat refined sugar.”
• “You failed at the diet. What an idiot!”
When we eat based upon what our mind tells us, we become anxious. This anxiety increases as information about food changes. When I was in medical school, eggs were “bad” because of cholesterol. A few years later, eggs were “good” again: They have lots of vitamin A, and they don’t raise your cholesterol.
The mind knows that information is always changing, so it cannot be at ease. When we eat based on worry, our enjoyment of food disappears.
9. Heart Hunger
Heart hunger is related to celebrations and love. Consider Thanksgiving turkey or the soup your grandmother gave you when you were sick. You can start a lively conversation by asking people which foods are their “comfort foods.”
There’s nothing wrong with eating because we’re heart hungry—it’s what humans do. But if we do it without awareness, it might not be the most effective way to address what we’re truly hungry for, and it can create other problems.
Most people are aware that they eat when they feel anxious. This is partly because the symptoms of anxiety are similar to the symptoms of hunger: belly pains, a dry mouth, shakiness, irritability, difficulty focusing. But eating more won’t cure anxiety. It may have the opposite effect and awaken self-critical thoughts.
When you’re heart hungry, remember that food is the energy of the sun, earth, and rain, converted into forms you can eat. This energy has passed through millions of bodies since the formation of the universe, and it will temporarily take the form of your body.
Take a minute to pick something on your plate. It could be anything, from carrots to yogurt. Imagine that you’re running a videotape backward from the time this food was served. First, you might see the person who cooked the food. Before that there was the person who shopped for the food, the checkout clerk, the person who stocked the shelves, the person who drove the truck that delivered the food to the back of the grocery store, and the person who unloaded it. Keep going until you reach the farm. Then add in the other life forms that contributed to this food: earthworms, bees, beneficial microbes in the soil.
Now, imagine all these life forms in front of you. Their life energy has flowed in a stream, through space and time, to nourish you. Thank them for this gift. And enjoy eating it—mindfully.
