One reason is just that eating food is enjoyable. I limit the amount of food I eat to stay within a healthy range, but if I could increase that amount while staying healthy, I could enjoy that excess.
I think there are two aspects to the enjoyment of food. One is related to satiety. I enjoy the feeling of sating my appetite, and failing to sate it leaves me with te negative experience of craving food (negative if I don’t satisfy those cravings.
But the other aspect is just the enjoyment of eating each individual bite of food. Not the separate enjoyment of sating my appetite, but just the experience of eating.*
When I was younger and much more physically active I ate very large amounts of food. I miss being able to do that. I’m just as sated now with the much smaller portions I eat, but eating a small breakfast instead of a large one is a different experience.
This probably doesn’t justify some sort of risky intervention in increasing liver size. Food is enjoyable, but so are a lot of other things in life. But shifting to a higher protien diet seems like the kind of safe intervention, potentially even also healthier in other respects, that, if it has the side effect of being able to eat a little more food, could improve quality of life with minimal other costs. Potential costs I see are related to the price of protein relative to other sources of nutrition, the cost of additional food (if the point is being able to eat more, you’ve got spend money for that excess), and, depending on one’s moral views, something related to the source of the protien being added.
*I think Kahneman’s remembering vs. expereincing selves adds some confusion here as well. When we remember a meal we don’t necessarily remember the enjoyment we got from every bite, but probably put more weight on the feeling of satiety and the peak experience (how good did it taste at its best?). But the experiencing self experiences every bite. How much you want to weight the remembering vs. experiencing self is a philosophical issue, but I just want to note that it comes up here.
One reason is just that eating food is enjoyable. I limit the amount of food I eat to stay within a healthy range, but if I could increase that amount while staying healthy, I could enjoy that excess.
Ah. I eat to sustain myself. Given that I must, I make it reasonably enjoyable, but it’s a chore I’d just as soon do without.
Not intended to be an insult: I find it astonishing that it’s possible to not notice that people mostly eat for enjoyment, and that eating to sustain oneself is not the norm. (Of course, this is coming from a person who eats mostly for enjoyment, and couldn’t imagine that some people mostly eat to (edit: I wrote it backwards) sustain themselves.)
In particular, why do you think that so many people were overweight/obese? You flagged this with your remark about the fact that people mostly “cannot just-”, but still, mechanistically, what did you think was causing most people to overeat?
As I mentioned, I eat to sustain myself. I find quite repellent the idea of growing a bigger liver just to be able to eat more, and it did not even occur to me that someone would want to do that.
As for why people have got a lot fatter over recent decades, there are various ideas, but I don’t think anyone knows. ETA: See also.
Just as a look into a different world, ever since I can remember I have loved eating a lot, have wished that I could do more without consequence, and I have dedicated a lot of mental energy to try to figure out ways of maximizing the amount of eating I get to do at a minimum of effort and penalty, and conversely, eating less than I want to involves a considerable about of dissatisfaction and suffering.
If I could magically eat as much as I wanted to without suffering negative consequences to my health (or getting over full), I would basically be eating constantly and it would be one of the main sources of baseline hedonism I have, the same way others listen to music, take baths, etc. Even though it would be expensive.
Projecting my mind onto others, I think this is why a lot of fad diets exist, and there’s a disproportionately large amount of low quality discourse about diet and nutrition. A lot of people want the same thing to be possible and are coping hard to believe that it could be so.
Viewed in this light, the “growing a bigger liver” thing seems like a pretty straightforward idea, although I admit that it sounds pretty grotesque from a certain perspective. (Still, though, by comparison, some people do want to grow more muscle primarily so that they can eat more (something I explicitly did the calculations for), and on the grotesque side, people have taken some pretty nasty drugs or just gotten themselves infected with tapeworms just to stay thin.)
One reason is just that eating food is enjoyable. I limit the amount of food I eat to stay within a healthy range, but if I could increase that amount while staying healthy, I could enjoy that excess.
I think there are two aspects to the enjoyment of food. One is related to satiety. I enjoy the feeling of sating my appetite, and failing to sate it leaves me with te negative experience of craving food (negative if I don’t satisfy those cravings.
But the other aspect is just the enjoyment of eating each individual bite of food. Not the separate enjoyment of sating my appetite, but just the experience of eating.*
When I was younger and much more physically active I ate very large amounts of food. I miss being able to do that. I’m just as sated now with the much smaller portions I eat, but eating a small breakfast instead of a large one is a different experience.
This probably doesn’t justify some sort of risky intervention in increasing liver size. Food is enjoyable, but so are a lot of other things in life. But shifting to a higher protien diet seems like the kind of safe intervention, potentially even also healthier in other respects, that, if it has the side effect of being able to eat a little more food, could improve quality of life with minimal other costs. Potential costs I see are related to the price of protein relative to other sources of nutrition, the cost of additional food (if the point is being able to eat more, you’ve got spend money for that excess), and, depending on one’s moral views, something related to the source of the protien being added.
*I think Kahneman’s remembering vs. expereincing selves adds some confusion here as well. When we remember a meal we don’t necessarily remember the enjoyment we got from every bite, but probably put more weight on the feeling of satiety and the peak experience (how good did it taste at its best?). But the experiencing self experiences every bite. How much you want to weight the remembering vs. experiencing self is a philosophical issue, but I just want to note that it comes up here.
Ah. I eat to sustain myself. Given that I must, I make it reasonably enjoyable, but it’s a chore I’d just as soon do without.
Not intended to be an insult: I find it astonishing that it’s possible to not notice that people mostly eat for enjoyment, and that eating to sustain oneself is not the norm. (Of course, this is coming from a person who eats mostly for enjoyment, and couldn’t imagine that some people mostly eat to (edit: I wrote it backwards) sustain themselves.)
In particular, why do you think that so many people were overweight/obese? You flagged this with your remark about the fact that people mostly “cannot just-”, but still, mechanistically, what did you think was causing most people to overeat?
As I mentioned, I eat to sustain myself. I find quite repellent the idea of growing a bigger liver just to be able to eat more, and it did not even occur to me that someone would want to do that.
As for why people have got a lot fatter over recent decades, there are various ideas, but I don’t think anyone knows. ETA: See also.
Just as a look into a different world, ever since I can remember I have loved eating a lot, have wished that I could do more without consequence, and I have dedicated a lot of mental energy to try to figure out ways of maximizing the amount of eating I get to do at a minimum of effort and penalty, and conversely, eating less than I want to involves a considerable about of dissatisfaction and suffering.
If I could magically eat as much as I wanted to without suffering negative consequences to my health (or getting over full), I would basically be eating constantly and it would be one of the main sources of baseline hedonism I have, the same way others listen to music, take baths, etc. Even though it would be expensive.
Projecting my mind onto others, I think this is why a lot of fad diets exist, and there’s a disproportionately large amount of low quality discourse about diet and nutrition. A lot of people want the same thing to be possible and are coping hard to believe that it could be so.
Viewed in this light, the “growing a bigger liver” thing seems like a pretty straightforward idea, although I admit that it sounds pretty grotesque from a certain perspective. (Still, though, by comparison, some people do want to grow more muscle primarily so that they can eat more (something I explicitly did the calculations for), and on the grotesque side, people have taken some pretty nasty drugs or just gotten themselves infected with tapeworms just to stay thin.)
Fascinating topic!