Hunger and Emotions: Four Ways Hunger Secretly Hijacks Our Brain and Emotions

More Than a Rumbling Stomach

Hunger and Emotions are very connected. 

Is going too long in between meals or undereating having a profound impact on how you see the world? Maybe more than you realize?

Hunger is not just a physical craving. When we are hungry, particularly habitually as in undereating, dieting, or restriction, it’s more difficult to regulate our emotions, can impact our memory, and create behavior that is worse than if we had been satiated. 

I know when I’m primarily hunger (a 2 on the hunger scale- my fav tool!), my husband can always tell. He knows we need to feed me- stat! Call it hangry, but it’s much more than just irritability. 

Let’s take a closer look.

1. Hunger and Emotions: How Hunger Blunts Our Emotional Radar

We might think that hunger would sharpen our senses, making us more attuned to important emotional cues, but it’s the opposite- hunger seems to make our emotional radar less discriminating.

In other words, we’ll be bothered by seemingly neutral things that wouldn’t otherwise concern us.

Using pupil dilation as a measure of physiological arousal, in a study from 2021 researchers found that well-fed (sated) participants had a strong and specific arousal response to emotional sounds (like a baby laughing or an alarming scream), but a much lower response to neutral sounds (like a fan). In stark contrast, hungry participants showed a high level of arousal to both emotional and neutral sounds. Their pupils dilated similarly for all stimuli, suggesting their brains were not effectively distinguishing between what was emotionally significant and what was not. 

The researchers suggest this might be because hunger-related hormones, like orexin, activate the brain's noradrenergic system—our arousal system—turning up the emotional volume on everything.

Essentially, little stuff bugs us more when we need food. This could make us feel we are anxious when really, we’re hungry!

2. Our Brain Prioritizes Food Memories (and Forgets the Rest)

From an evolutionary perspective, finding food is a critical survival skill, an evolutionary superpower. When we are hungry, our brain becomes a fine-tuned machine for thinking about food and how to find it. In research, hungry participants were significantly better at recalling images of food they had seen compared to full (sated)participants. This cognitive shift was directly linked to physiology; in a free recall test, lower blood glucose levels were associated with better memory for food items.

This can mean that we have higher food noise with less mental space to think about what matters most to us in the rest of our lives.

3. Hunger and Emotions: Hunger Memories Leaves a Lasting "Emotional Echo"

Perhaps one of the most notable discoveries is that the brain impacts from hunger aren't fleeting. Our physical state at the moment we experience something can leave a lasting imprint on our emotional memory of that event.

When research participants returned to the lab 48 hours later, they were asked to rate the sounds they had heard in the first session. The results showed that their hunger state during the initial exposure still influenced their perception.

Participants who were full or sated when they first heard the sounds later rated a much larger difference in arousal between the emotional and neutral sounds. Those who were hungry during the initial exposure perceived a smaller emotional gap between the two. In essence, their memory of the events was emotionally flatter, simply because they were hungry when they first experienced them.

Basically, being over hungry can make life events seem less enjoyable! 

4. We Finally Have a Clue About the "Hangry" Brain

My clients often report they get "hangry"—a portmanteau of hungry and angry. And I can totally relate! When I am not able to get to a meal when I would prefer, like when I’m traveling, the short-tempered, irritable state I find myself stuck in is a clear sign my stomach is empty.

But why does this happen?

The generalized high-arousal state observed in the hungry research participants' pupil responses offers a key insight. If your brain is reacting with high arousal to nearly every stimulus—important or not—it's primed for overreaction. As mentioned earlier, this may be driven by hunger-related hormones activating the brain's general arousal system. A minor annoyance or a neutral comment might trigger an outsized response simply because your brain's arousal system is already in overdrive and is less able to differentiate between genuine threats and harmless background noise.

So, things like impulsivity, aggression, and emotional overreaction are more likely. Fun, right?

So, the next time you feel "hangry," you can know it's not just a matter of impatience. It may be a physiological state where a less discriminating, high-arousal brain is simply more likely to overreact.

A New Perspective on Hunger

Hunger is not just a message from the stomach, but a profound cognitive and emotional state. It alters our ability to perceive emotional salience, reallocates memory resources toward survival-relevant goals, and can leave a lasting mark on how we remember events. It changes how we perceive, remember, and react to the world in fundamental ways.

The next time hunger strikes, ask: is my brain just telling me to eat, or is it changing how I see, remember, and feel the world?

Need support to get in touch with your hunger cues and find an eating pattern that supports your mental health? I got you. 

Citation: Montagrin A, Martins-Klein B, Sander D, Mather M. Effects of hunger on emotional arousal responses and attention/memory biases. Emotion. 2021 Feb;21(1):148-158. doi: 10.1037/emo0000680. Epub 2019 Oct 7. PMID: 31589063; PMCID: PMC7781156.