Below is an interesting video presentation by Paleo Guru,
J. Stanton of Gnolls.org, on his view of the way our mental and physical processes interact to produce Hunger, 

 

“Palability” and “reward” are not actual properties of food. Our likes and wants are subjective properties that we assign to food based on our past experiences and our current state of satiation and satiety." 
 

Bistro Shrimp Pasta (The Cheesecake Factory)
This dish might seem like a healthy choice because of the shrimp, mushrooms and arugula. However, at 3,120 calories it's the most caloric thing on the menu—yes, even more than the cheesecakes.

Crispy Chicken Costoletta (The Cheesecake Factory)
The meal sounds harmless with its "lightly breaded" chicken breasts, mashed potatoes and fresh asparagus, but the meal packs 2,610 calories. The dish has more calories than any steak, chop or burger meal on The Cheesecake Factory's menu

18-ounce Veal Porterhouse (Maggiano’s Little Italy)
Is it really necessary to eat six times the amount of a normal serving of veal in one sitting? Maggiano's thinks so: This colossally large portion of meat weighs in at 1,900 calories. And that's without any sides!

Little Italy Chocolate Zuccotto Cake (Maggiano's)
There's nothing like a little dessert to end a meal. But there's nothing ''little'' about this cake: It provides 1,820 calories.

Country Fried Steak & Eggs (IHOP)
This herculean meal includes 8 ounces of fried steak with country gravy, but it doesn't stop there! You also get to pile on two eggs, hash browns and two buttermilk pancakes. That filling feast comes with a nutritional cost of 1,760 calories.

Baby Back Ribs (Full Rack) with Shiner Bock BBQ Sauce (Chili's)
Eating this rack of ribs would supply you with the nutritional equivalent of two Chili's Classic Sirloin Steak dinners with mashed potatoes—plus another 10-ounce Classic Sirloin Steak on the side. This meal tips the scales at 1,660 calories. If you order the Homestyle Fries and Cinnamon Apples to complete your meal, you increase the damage to over 2,300 calories<...

Eating Healthy and Weight-Loss
are two separate issues.

 Aligning Nutrition, Calories and Enjoyment 
           
                 by Dr. Arya Sharma, Obesity Management Professor

Healthy eating (at least in the conventional sense) and weight management are actually two different issues - related perhaps, but different!

We only need to remind ourselves of Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, who for 10 weeks sustained himself on a “convenience store diet” consisting largely of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Dorito chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, thereby losing 27 pounds and reducing his BMI from 28.8 to 24.9 - all of this, with no exercise (accompanied by a 40% reduction in triglycerides and a 20% increase in HDL cholesterol - go figure!).

Haub conducted this “experiment” to illustrate one simple point: when you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight - even on the “unhealthiest” diet imaginable (he limited himself to 1800 Cal, well below his estimated requirement of about 2400 Cal).

Conversely, although, I am not sure that anyone has done this, I am completely certain that you could eat the healthiest possible diet (orthorexic organic vegan if you chose) and yet gain weight by consuming more calories than you need.

Thus, the “healthiness” of your diet and the “caloric content” of your diet actually have little to do with each other.

“Healthiness” is a matter of nutrients - ensuring that your diet delivers the appropriate amount of macro and micronutrients to your body to ensure its “nutritional balance”.

However, whether or not you gain or lose weight on that nutritionally balanced “healthy” diet, ultimately depends on its caloric content.

In other words, it does not matter how healthy or unhealthy your diet is - if you don’t cut calories, your weight stays the same. (as 85% of weight management is about calories “in” - let’s not worry about physical activity in this discussion)

Ideally, a “healthy diet” would ensure both “nutritional” and “caloric” balance - i.e. give you all the nutrients you need to be healthy AND exactly the number of calories you need to maintain your weight.

There is, however, a third characteristic of a diet that plays into this discussion - the feeling of enjoyment (pleasure, happiness, excitement, satisfaction, comfort).

Enjoyment is elicited by features like taste, smell and texture, which together make up the palatability of foods. Enjoyment, also in...