Over fall break I decided to go home to my hometown in Freehold, NJ. One of the main reasons why I enjoy going home so much is because of the incredible meals my mom makes. After spending a lot of time in traffic on the way home, I was very hungry. Thankfully, I walked into my house to a lovely meal of pasta with Bolognese sauce. This sauce has special ingredients in it that I will not share, but the basic ingredients include: carrots, celery, onion, garlic, a pinch of salt, fennel, tomato sauce, white wine, oil, and cheese. Its cooked on the stove for a few hours and then layered over al dente rigatoni pasta. After this, the sauce and pasta is put into a pan and a layer of mozzarella coats the Bolognese at a temperature of 375 degrees. To me, this sounds so incredibly appetizing. 

In psychology, we have been discussing things like food cue and hunger and it made me think that maybe I wasn’t hungry. Maybe I was just ready to eat something because it was that time of the day. The food cue that popped into my head was the time of day people eat. For me, the normal time of day to have dinner is around 6:00. It could vary for many people by hours or so, but the socially acceptable time in our society to eat dinner is around that time. Another cue that made me think I was hungry was the smell and sight of the meal. I know that this specific meal really clenches my taste buds and satisfies my appetite, but I did not have an appetite. This just shows that the presences of foods and food cues can really trigger an appetite even if it isn’t even there. We do not notice that food cues are the reason for us eating what, where and when we eat, but we do know that they’re what makes us eat. The idea of eating is engraved into our heads because of the social factors that take part in the idea of eating. Certain times, people, sights, smells and other factors make us want to eat and trigger an unwanted appetite.