You have just finished your hamburger and your fries, you already have a very full stomach (or even a stomach ache) and yet... you have an irrepressible urge to add a slice of chocolate brownie or a milkshake. Weird? We reassure you:no, you are not a glutton who cannot stop. It turns out that in reality, still wanting to eat when physically you feel full, it would be normal, or at least, a response to a “bad habit” that you have taken. This is confirmed by researchers at the University of Vermont, although the hypothesis has not yet been confirmed in humans.
Psychology researchers Dr. Scott Schepers and Mark Bouton conducted a 12-day study on rats. The rodents were thus caged with full bellies, and learned to use a lever allowing them to receive treats. After a while, the lever stopped dispensing, so the rats associated being full with receiving treats and feeling hungry with not having food. Results ? By repeating the experiment, the researchers were able to observe that the rats pressed the lever more when they were full than when they were hungry... Crazy, isn't it? Even if the experiment has not yet been conducted on humans, it suggests that it's all a matter of habit:basically, if you're used to getting "flanked" fairly regularly, it's possible that we want to eat more when we have a full stomach than an empty stomach. This is the case, for example, if you go to a restaurant and order a menu with a dessert, you force yourself to eat when you are no longer hungry after the dish. The body and the brain get used to the fact that a full stomach =even more food, and it almost becomes a need.
All that remains is to explain this to our brains...
