Hunger induced changes in food choice. When beggars cannot be choosers even if they are allowed to choose.

The present work was to examine the influence of food deprivation on food choice. For this purpose hungry versus satiated subjects were presented with a series of choices between two snacks in a complete block design of pairwise comparisons. Snacks systematically varied with respect to subjects' idiosyncratic taste preferences (preferred versus un-preferred snack), portion size (large portion versus very small portion), and availability in terms of time (immediately available versus available only after a substantial time delay). Food choices were analyzed with a conjoint analysis which corroborated the assumption that food deprivation decreases the relative importance of taste preference and increases the importance of immediate availability of food.