We all recognise that most of us eat for greed rather than need. It has become a norm than an exception, in the modern world. Surrounded by the urban food environment, eat for pleasure rather than to satisfy our biological need. This phenomenon is referred to as hedonic hunger and results in food intake that can over-ride the body’s innate homeosistic system for controlling eating, leading to over consumption of calories. However, what we do not realise is that the more you weigh, higher the hedonic hunger.

Hedonic hunger refers to eating for pleasure rather than to satisfy a biological need. This results in food intake that can override the body’s homeostatic systems for controlling eating and lead to overconsumption of calories.
Hedonic hunger is driven by the signaling of hormones and neurotransmitters, including dopamine, and involves the reward centers of the brain. It has been suggested that the pleasure response to dopamine is dampened in obesity such that it takes increasing amounts of palatable foods to activate brain reward centers. The question is whether low dopamine or receptor levels contribute to obesity by causing an individual to eat more in a subconscious attempt to “feel good” or whether obesity leads to a dampened dopamine response. It has been shown that dopamine receptor levels in the brain increase after weight loss, leading researchers to propose that obesity may dampen dopamine response at the receptor level and that weight loss may correct it. A recent study published in 2010 in the American Journal of Nutrition reported that in comparison with nonobese control subjects, severely obese patients display a marked increase in hedonic hunger that is not observed in patients who have undergone gastric bypass surgery, suggesting that the operation normalizes excessive appetite for palatable foods, which may be an important pathophysiologic feature of severe obesity.
Besides our genetic predisposition (thrifty genes) towards obesity, it is the surrounding food environment which is causing causing the epidemic of obesity.