There may be a reason the grocery store feels more tempting when you are hungry. A small study found that people could imagine the flavor of food more easily, quickly and vividly before eating than after they felt full.
The findings do not show that grocery shopping while hungry causes people to buy more food or make less nutritious choices. The researchers did not track shopping behavior or measure how much participants ate. But the study adds to a broader understanding of why food decisions are not simply a matter of willpower. Hunger may change how readily the mind can recreate the sensory experience of eating.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Appetite, explored the relationship between hunger and food-related mental imagery. Mental imagery is the ability to imagine an experience without directly seeing, tasting or touching it. Someone might picture the rich flavor of chocolate cake, the crunch of a potato chip or the creamy texture of ice cream before taking a bite.
Researchers wanted to know whether those imagined sensory experiences become stronger when the body is hungry.
“It seems intuitive that food thoughts might become stronger when we are hungry, but this study tested that idea experimentally,” said Mei Peng, an associate professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand and a co-author of the study.
About 60 people participated in the research, which involved two experiments.
In the first experiment, participants were asked to imagine the flavor and texture of foods while they were hungry and after they had eaten. Researchers measured how vivid the imagined experiences felt, how easy they were to generate and how quickly participants formed them.
Hunger made a difference when people imagined flavor. Participants found it easier to picture flavor when they were hungry. They also generated those images more quickly and described them as more vivid.
Texture worked differently. Participants generally found texture easier to imagine than flavor, but hunger did not affect texture imagery in the same way.
“We often think of flavour as central to food reward, but our results suggest that texture may be especially accessible in mental imagery,” Peng said. “At the same time, hunger changed flavour imagery but did not affect texture imagery in the same way.”
The distinction may sound subtle, but it suggests that the senses do not all play identical roles in appetite and food cravings. Hunger may intensify some imagined aspects of eating more than others.
In a second experiment, researchers tested whether repeatedly imagining the experience of eating a food changed how participants evaluated an actual sample. Participants completed 30 rounds of flavor- or texture-focused mental imagery involving chocolate cookies.
Repeatedly imagining the food did not change how much participants liked or wanted the actual samples. Their imagined liking declined as the exercise continued, but their evaluations of the real food did not.
That finding is important because it sets limits on what the research can tell us. Hunger may make certain food images easier to generate, but the study does not show that thinking about food automatically changes how much someone eats or inevitably leads to a craving.
It also does not prove that eating decisions can be explained by hunger alone. Stress, sleep, habit, food availability, social settings and personal preferences can all shape what someone chooses to eat.
Still, the findings offer a useful reminder: the same food may feel more compelling in one moment than another because the body is sending different signals.
“In certain bodily states, such as hunger, imagined food experiences may become more vivid and more rewarding, making food feel especially tempting,” Peng said.
The research also reinforces a more compassionate way to think about cravings. Feeling drawn to a food when hungry is not evidence of weak discipline. It may reflect a shift in how vividly the mind can imagine the reward of eating it.
The research was supported by Te Apārangi The Royal Society of New Zealand through the Marsden Fund. Co-author Mei Peng reported financial support from the Marsden Fund.