Food for Water

Recently, I went through a couple of days when I was so ravenous that it seemed I couldn't get enough food. All I wanted to do was eat. Even after a meal, I found myself mentally rifling through the kitchen...What can I eat? What can I eat? Finally, for some reason, instead of eating something, I chugged a large glass of water. And you know what? My body prompted me to drink more and more water! After about a liter in all, I was satisfied and....I wasn't hungry anymore! So, all long, what I thought was hunger was actually thirst. I had mistaken my thirst for hunger. 

I doubt I am the only person who has ever done this. And I'm certain this wasn't the first time I ever did this either. So, it got me wondering why I could have confused the two impulses. I came up with a couple of theories about the correlation between thirst and hunger. Tell me what you think.

First, even though we've been taught that hunger is a stomach sensation, true hunger is experienced in the back of the throat near the thirst center; and both true hunger and thirst sensations are characterized by dull pangs.  So it might be that we can easily mistake one for the other.  

Oh, in case you're wondering, those sensations that we take as indications of hunger--stomach pangs, stomach grumblings, moodiness, lethargy, fatigue, thoughts of and cravings for food, etc., are actually impulses coming from food addictions, 'cause, if you notice, when your stomach growls and you decide to eat something, you seek out something in particular. Not just any old food will do. [Doesn't your inner dialog usually go something like this: Hungry, you say? Here eat some lettuce...No, I'm thinking maybe a brownie will do the trick.]   

Another reason is that, anatomically and biologically, humans aren't water drinkers, so, we're not 'programmed' to seek out water. I know this sounds strange, but it's true. If you consider our anatomy alone, you can see that we don't have the anatomy of water drinking creatures--no long textured tongue to lap water from a stream, and no ultra short legs to conveniently and safely put our mouths close to the natural water source. For humans to drink water safely and conveniently in nature, we need to have a cup or other vessel to gather the water and then drink it. And cups don't grow in nature. Or else, we could tip the dew collected on leaves into our mouths, but we'd have to tip an awful lot of leaves to get a decent amount of water.

Like other primates, humans in nature get their water from the foods they eat--fruits and leafy vegetation.  No primate naturally drinks water. Fruits and leafy vegetation are something like 70-90% water, so it stands to reason that, in a natural setting and eating a diet of our biological adaptation, our thirst would be satisfied at the same time we're eating.  So, could it be that when our bodies put out signals for thirst they prompt us to go seek out food, since that is where, for millions of years, we got our water? 

These are just theories, but the next time you get hungry try experimenting with drinking a glass of water first. Maybe you're just thirsty.