How your age affects your appetite

While everyone eats every day, hungry or not, our relationship with food changes, based on our age.

Apart from hunger, our mind and body get the ‘cue’ to eat using advertising, smells, sounds and certain visuals, leading to recreational consumption.

There are seven stages of appetite that influence our eating habits.

• Age 0-10: Rapid growth and heavy dietary requirements mark this time, and one has to watch out for junk food eating habits along with certain controlled eating formations in kids.
• Age 10-20: The hormonal changes in this age along with the teen lifestyle trigger unhealthy food choices in this critical age.
• Age 20-30: College, marriage, live-in or parenthood often leads to weight gain, as the body tends to send strong signals to eat, but not for overeating.
• Age 30-40: Lack of a work-life balance and certain food addictions affect one’s health during mid-life. The working population often sacrifice their hunger pangs by unhealthy snacking (like coffee and doughnuts), as the focus is on productivity, not health.
• Age 40-50: Lifestyle problems start to come in the picture in this age due to the kind of diet consumed in the earlier stages, though some symptoms are silent, like high blood pressure or cholesterol.
• Age 50-60: The body starts to decline, with a gradual loss of muscle mass (called sarcopenia) which is due to less physical activity and consuming less protein.