Don’t Make Major Decisions on an Empty Stomach

Hunger fog will cloud your thinking

We know how anger and rage cloud our thinking. Anger cripples our thinking brain and energizes our emotional brain. Hasty decisions and impulsive actions are anger’s unwanted offsprings.

Little do we realize that hunger too can confound our thinking and force us to think and act tactlessly. Anger’s impact on the body reveals itself in various ways. We breathe faster, our facial muscles tighten, and we can sense the heart beating faster. Unless it is furious rage, we can know the anger’s physical changes on our bodies.

Hunger does not produce palpable physical signs except on children who show their irritation by crying aloud. We may feel a gnawing sense in our stomach but may ignore it often. Hunger depletes our energy levels and we may not always recognize these symptoms.

What the gut knows and feels immediately transmits to the brain. The gut-brain axis has become a recent field for intense scientific research.

The gut and the brain are in constant touch with each other. The gut is a mini-brain. It has its own nervous system including neurotransmitters like serotonin that influences our sense of wellbeing.

Hunger makes us irritable and angry. We describe this mental state as “hangry”. A study’s summary reported in sciencedaily.com says :

“Never make a decision when you are hungry. The hormone ghrelin — that is released before meals and known to increase appetite — has a negative effect on both decision making and impulse control. Such were the results of a recently conducted study at Sahlgrenska University.”

A study from Dundee university in the UK asked questions to a group of respondents when they were fully satiated and when their stomachs were empty. Their answers showed that we are more liable to go for immediate gratification and short-term gains on an empty stomach. Hunger fog can also make us take the wrong life decisions.

We all know visiting a store on an empty stomach will make us fill our trolleys with unwanted and unhealthy things. Never meet an estate agent on an empty stomach. You will end up buying the wrong property. Never make financial investments when you are feeling hunger pangs.

Experiments conducted on the fruit fly, Drosophila, by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have shown that hunger not only changes behaviour, but also changes pathways in the brain.

Our risk-taking appetite depends on whether we are hungry or full. We take more risks when hungry.

“Justice is what the judge ate for breakfast.”, goes a saying.

The summary of a Columbia University study says, “We find that the likelihood of a favorable ruling is greater at the very beginning of the work day or after a food break than later in the sequence of cases.” Judgments get harsher as the judges get hungrier.

When we are starving, the Monkey Brain takes over. All it thinks about is how to fill the stomach with the next meal.

A study from Oxford and the University of Aarhus shows that hungrier people will corner more of a set of resources and force others to accept their decision.

The researchers said, “we consistently find that hungry individuals act in a greedier manner but describe themselves as more cooperative and express greater support for social welfare.”

There is a counterintuitive hypothesis that says an empty stomach helps us to tap into what we call the “gut instinct”. But this does not apply if we have been really starving for hours.

Have a meal before going shopping, making important life decisions like financial investments, and choosing a life partner.

Thanks for reading.