Discuss factors that affect the sensations of hunger and appetite

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Appetite prompts a person to eat—or not to eat. Somehow the body decides how much and how often to eat—when to start eating and when to stop.

People eat for a variety of reasons, most obviously (although not necessarily most commonly) because they are hungry. Most people recognize hunger as an irritating feeling that prompts thoughts of food and motivates them to start eating. In the body, hunger is the physiological response to a need for food triggered by nerve signals and chemical messengers originating and acting in the brain, primarily in the hypothalamus. Hunger can be influenced by the presence or absence of nutrients in the bloodstream, the size and composition of the preceding meal, customary eating patterns, climate (heat reduces food intake; cold increases it), physical activity, hormones, and illnesses. Hunger determines what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat.
The stomach is ideally designed to handle periodic batches of food, and people typically eat meals at roughly 4-hour intervals. Four hours after a meal, most, if not all, of the food has left the stomach. Most people do not feel like eating again until the stomach is either empty or almost so. Even then, a person may not feel hungry for quite a while.