ABSTRACT
Commercialization of eating has brought with it a relentless tsunami of marketing and advertising about food products and a plethora of advice or information on what we should or should not eat, why we should eat a certain amount or way, and with what objective. Psychological science is an integrative discipline that is uniquely well positioned to bridge the streams of scientific thought that are relevant to eating and its problems. Treatment of obesity takes an enormous fraction of the health care budget, regardless of whether the funds are public or private. Hunger is a subjective sensation – it can only be measured by self-report. All animals eat, and the study of feeding behavior of animals can give us important insights into human behavior. Further, for animals that have similar feeding habits to our own, there is every reason to believe that some of the physiological and brain mechanisms underlying feeding are similar to our own.
