No matter what feast you’ve just eaten and how stuffed you are, if someone brings a brownie sundae, you’ve suddenly got space in your stomach.
I’ve been preyed on at my most vulnerable by waitresses armed with the little dessert menu full of joy. When I’m bursting at the seams, they’ll come over and offer the pudding of my dreams, knowing that my famous ‘second stomach’ will kick in.
I always thought it was just an excuse we could all use for being greedy, but it turns out that the renewed appetite for sweetness is actually a biological phenomenon.
It is called sensory-specific satiety which describes how your appetite for food changes according to the type of food you are eating as a way of your body regulating a balanced diet.
So when you eat one type of food, you experience a decreased desire to for that food compared to different tastes, textures, and colours.
This evolutionary function was really useful for our ancestors who employed the instinct to ensure they sourced a balance of proteins, healthy fats, carbs, and vitamins.
However in this superabundant world, we have too much food being thrown at us with excess sugar so it’s difficult to control the intake when we’re hardwired to want something different all the time.
This is why buffets are so hard!
