If you're a fan of coffee but want to maintain your weight, you might wonder whether drinking coffee could make you hungry. While there isn't a scientifically established causal link between coffee and hunger, coffee affects your body in a number of ways that could plausibly cause you to feel hungry.
Coffee
The chemical compound in coffee that is responsible for the vast majority of its effects in your body is caffeine. Caffeine is a nervous system stimulant; specifically, it activates the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. This branch, explains Dr. Lauralee Sherwood in her book "Human Physiology," is sometimes called the "fight or flight" branch because it helps to prepare you to face a threat; when it's stimulated, your heart rate and respiration rate increase, and blood flow to your muscles increases.
Metabolism
One of the effects of caffeine on your body is that it increases your metabolism, or the rate at which your cells consume energy. For this reason, caffeine is a common ingredient in supplemental diet pills. Stimulated by caffeine, your cells burn through much of the sugar in your bloodstream, decreasing your blood sugar level. This can, in turn, make you feel hungry. It also causes you to release sugar from the liver into the blood, explain Drs. Reginald Garrett and Charles Grisham in their book "Biochemistry."
Another Possibility
Humans have the tendency to interpret signals other than true hunger as signs that they need to eat. Caffeine can be a bit irritating to the stomach, and if you drink a large quantity of coffee, the acid in the coffee can also upset your gut a bit. It's possible that if you feel a bit queasy after a large quantity of coffee, you could interpret that signal as hunger, particularly because eating something will dilute the coffee and reduce your symptoms.
General Guidelines
If you find that drinking coffee makes you feel hungry and you don't want to experience hunger, try drinking half-caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. Once the caffeine has been removed from the coffee, there are no chemicals left that could make you feel hungry, and you should be able to enjoy the flavor of the beverage without the undesirable side effects. Alternately, you could try eating a little something with your coffee to slow its absorption.
References
- "Human Physiology"; Lauralee Sherwood, Ph.D.; 2004
- "Biochemistry"; Reginald Garrett, Ph.D. and Charles Grisham, Ph.D.; 2007
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