Book Portfolio Quarter 4

Hunger by: Sharman Apt Russell

Seeing food sends a message to your nerve cells in the lower brain, which then sends a message to the stomach and pancreas. This starts the production of the enzymes, acids and mucus. The lower brain triggers the salivary glands, making your mouth water, and now your ready to eat.

Saliva stimulates taste receptors, and lubricates food. Your tongue pushes the food back and after that your body takes over.The small intestine does most of the job of absorbing nutrients. Many studies have been performed to come to these conclusions.

" Hunger is experienced not just in abdominal ache but as a heaviness in the limbs, a yearning in the mouth." Says Drew Leder who studies people's eating habits.

In 2001 Angelo Del Parigi, of the national institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases performed a study. The object was to see if the brains of men and women responded differently to short- term hunger. The subjects ate well balanced and healthy meals for a week and then were not allowed to eat for thirty- six hours. In his experiment men and women did not show any significant differences in how they rated hunger.

Back in 1848 Henry S. Tanner moved to the United States from England. He was taught that human beings could not live for more than ten days with out food. After a few years of living in the U.S Tanner became more and more depressed and decided he would starve himself to death by not eating for ten days. Ten days later he was still in good health. He ended up fasting for forty days and on the 40th day when he could eat he surprised many people. He ate a peach, drank a glass of rice milk, devoured a watermelon, ate a broiled beef steak and a half pound of sirloin. He soon gained back all his weight. He began promoting his idea of the " recuperative power of the self."

Many people stop eating or fast in protest, they are called hunger strikers. They believe hunger can strengthen the weak, inspire the timid and bully the powerful. Fasting as protest is not new. In medieval Ireland fasting against someone was part of their legal system. If someone felt you had done something wrong to them and died hungry on your door step, you became responsible for his debts.

Today we have many people who can not afford food or even clothing. Their are many starving families in Guatemala for instance and this is not something new. Hunger has been around forever, even since we lived in caves and trapped our own food, or picked nuts and berries it is just more known now than ever.