We have come to a place where most people agree that hunger should be eliminated in our country. No child should go to school or bed hungry and families should have access to enough food to eliminate hunger. This is now viewed as a basic human right. It forms the basis of food banks, programs like Feeding America, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (food stamps) and school breakfast and lunch programs. To take a closer look at this issue I think we first need to examine the concept of hunger. Just what does it mean when someone says they are hungry?

The Nature of Hunger
Hunger is defined as the physical sensation of desiring food. Hunger was hardwired into our brains over a long period of evolution to be sure that we have enough food to meet our nutritional needs. We need both calories for energy and micronutrients to maintain our health. Thus it is assumed that people who experience hunger are lacking either food for energy or micronutrients. During most of our evolutionary history this was true, but is it still true today?

The Big Disconnect
What happens when hunger becomes disconnected from our nutritional needs? I believe that is the situation we are faced with today. Many people now experience hunger when their body really doesn’t need more nourishment. It seems that our hunger drives have somehow been hijacked and they no longer serve our needs. As a matter of fact, our hunger now often leads us further down a pathway of disease and poor health. If this is true, there must be a reason for this disconnect.

Although we don’t fully understand the complex nature of hunger, it is clear that it originates in our brain. Our brain uses glucose levels as a measure of our food intake status. During most of our evolutionary history humans consumed whole foods. The human diet tended to be relatively high in protein and fat and the carbohydrates consumed tended to seasonal fruits and some root vegetables. These carbohydrates are absorbed slowly so glucose levels don’t fluctuate too much when they are consumed.

Feed Me, Feed Me
If our caveman ancestor failed to eat for a period of time, his glucose levels would slowly start to drop. Fat stores would also be depleted, suppressing the release of leptin and insulin. The brain can use either glucose or ketones from fat for energy and in this situation both would be in short supply. His brain would respond by ramping up hunger levels. If he failed to find any food, glucose and ketone levels would continue to drop, depriving his brain of energy. In this emergency situation his brain would pull out the big gun—carbohydrate cravings. The quickest way to get energy to the brain in this situation would be to eat a carbohydrate, not a mastodon steak. Thus carbohydrate cravings are hard-wired into our brains as an emergency signal.

Twinkie Brain
When you consume tons of processed foods loaded with sugar and high glycemic carbohydrates—let’s say Twinkies, you end up with some degree of insulin resistance and your body and brain becomes adapted to using glucose for energy rather than ketones. When you have insulin resistance and consume high glycemic carbohydrates, you end up with magnified glucose spikes followed by a drop of glucose to below normal, so-called reactive hypoglycemia. Because the brain wasn’t exposed to such glucose spikes throughout human evolutionary history, it doesn’t know how to read them. It does know how to read low glucose levels—it’s time to eat! You eat another Twinkie and end up with another glucose spike followed by a drop below normal. Your brain sees these unstable glucose levels and assumes that you aren’t eating enough so it pulls out the big gun—carbohydrate cravings. You then end up eating the whole box of Twinkies driven by these out of control hunger signals and carbohydrate cravings.

Because neurons don’t have an insulin gate, these cells are also subjected to glucose spikes that can eventually interfere with the mitochondria in the cells. Glucose spikes also seem to cause a inappropriate dumping of neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. Over time the cells become depleted of these key chemicals, resulting in a long list of brain dysfunction symptoms. Because your brain incorrectly assumes that you aren’t eating enough, it throws you into a famine-protective metabolic mode where your body will store fat at any caloric intake. High insulin levels also promote increased fat storage on a cellular basis and traps the fat in the cells where it can’t be used for energy.

Hijacked Hunger
In this situation your hunger levels and carbohydrate cravings clearly become disconnected from your nutritional needs. They become hijacked by the consumption of processed food. We now call this form of food-induced brain dysfunction Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. People with CARB syndrome can develop up to 22 brain dysfunction symptoms that interfere with their ability to function and their body will begin to store extra fat at virtually any caloric intake.

If this scenario is accurate, then in today’s world hunger levels are clearly not good measures of nutritional status. As a matter of fact, those with the most hunger are likely the ones who don’t need more food—they need to eat food that won’t fry their brain.

Are We Really Helping Folks?
Let’s look at the SNAP program. Years ago there was restrictions on what type of food could be purchased with food stamps, but today virtually all such restrictions have been eliminated. If a person on this program has CARB syndrome, they will likely purchase the food they crave—highly processed food loaded with sugar, grains and vegetable oils, the very food that is frying their brain. That’s one reason why the obesity epidemic has hit low-income people harder than any other group. Because processed food tends to be less expensive than healthy whole foods, people on a limited income tend to purchase more processed food.

Our Toxic Food Environment
The solution to this dilemma will be tricky. If we ignore people who say they are hungry we will be branded as heartless knaves. As Robert Lustig states in his book “Fat Chance”, we need to change our toxic food environment and this will certainly not be easy to do. Our government subsidizes the sugar, grains and vegetable oils found in processed food and our entire food industry is based on cranking out more and more of this fake food. Because charities, school lunch programs and food shelves are often on a limited budget, they tend to buy more cheap processed food for their customers. Even if they try to promote healthy whole foods, people often choose processed food because of their cravings.

Reconnect with Your True Hunger
Because changing our toxic food environment will be a huge public health challenge, you can grab the bull by the horns and work to get your own hunger levels and cravings back in line with your true nutritional needs. You can start this bottom up approach today even if the rest of the world is heading in the wrong direction. To get your carbohydrate cravings under control, consider taking the safe amino acid L-glutamine 1,000 mg 3x daily. CARB-22 is a precursor supplement that can also help to control hunger and cravings. Saffron can also be useful in this regard.

Once your cravings are under control, move towards a whole foods diet free of processed foods. I like the Paleo approach outlined in Loren Cordain’s book “The Paleo Answer” or Robb Wolf’s book “The Paleo Solution”. I also recommend reading David Perlmutter’s new book “Grain Brain” to learn more details about how processed food can fry your brain. Even though it’s been out for a decade, Joseph Mercola’s book “The No-Grain Diet” outlines an excellent program for getting back on track. For those who are metabolically damaged with type II diabetes, a ketogenic diet might be the way to go. Jimmy Moore is the master of ketogenic diets and will be coming out with a new book on this topic next year. You should also limit your fructose to less than 24 grams per day. That means no sugar or HFCS. The best source of information on the relationship between sugar and health is Richard Johnson’s books “The Sugar Fix” and “The Fat Switch”.

In our modern world we can no longer rely on hunger as a reflection of people’s true nutritional needs. Starvation is clearly bad, a condition where a person starts breaking down their own tissues because of a lack of food. Virtually nobody in our country is truly starving but we clearly have a lot of hungry folks. The only real solution is to ignore hunger as a useful measure of nutritional status until the day comes when we no longer live in a toxic food environment. It will also help if we educate people about the disconnect between their hunger levels and nutritional status.