Shared food preferences and eating rituals are important to the pleasure bond that keeps couples and families together. The eating patterns of couples and families are fiercely defended and one person undergoing dietary revision to correct illness throws his or her spouse or family into a crisis. Underlying the social level of eating practice are the organismic determinants and constraints. Eating and sexuality are closely linked. Licking, biting, and chewing are as familiar in sexual metaphor as they are at the dinner table.
Odors influence the selection of food as much as the selection of a mate.
A person deprived of physical intimacy and affection will often turn to food as a source of gratification. Compulsive over-eating may be a displacement behavior, manifesting the lack of affection and sexual gratification. The hunger for sensual experience is readily displaced from one appetitive goal to another. The control of appetite is not consciously determined. Hunger is the monitor image of appetite, the drive to get food.