Eating By Model

 People have observed female blue jays eating paint chips, in fact they've chipped the paint off house siding to do so. They do it during nesting season to get calcium. We put out ground up oyster shells for our ducks as a calcium supplement. They eat it during egg laying season, and leave it alone once they're done laying for the year, typically in the early winter months.

Somehow the birds have a craving signal that directs them to eat calcium rich things when they're laying eggs. It's pretty likely most animals have the same type of signaling mechanism, including humans. However, especially in developed nations where food is always available, that mechanism is not really used to determine when to eat, or what or how much to eat.

I think most people's diet is based, essentially on an abstract model. For some people, it's pretty ad hoc, in others it's meticulously planned. Vegans or Keto diet people follow fairly strict "rules" about what to eat, most other people, including me are omnivores and our diet is based on habit, corporate advertising, and cultural traditions.

Would it be healthier to eat based on cravings and hunger pangs? I don't really know. The abstract model diet, though, seems pretty faulty. It's most likely the cause for the prevalence of overweight people in the developed world. If people only ate when they were hungry, they'd gravitate toward a "natural" weight for them. That is, their weight would be regulated by their body rather than by an abstract conceptual plan that's most likely formed by corporate advertising and product placement in grocery stores.

People in developed countries are extremely far removed from nature, even in the sphere of their own body. The natural messaging of cravings and hunger pangs is extremely muted for me most of the time.

The way we eat, that is, by use of an abstract model, like an arbitrary three-meal-a-day schedule is a good example of trying to impose a "conscious control system" on a self-regulating system. Is the conscious control and abstract model able to produce a better outcome than going with the natural flow and cues provided by the body. That's a really good question.