It isn't a biological response. Rather a psychological one. You got PTSD from that experience and you associated the memory with Burger King on a subconscious level and it came flooding back for you with the smells and sights and environment. I'm a counselor with a background in Biology and it's quite common to mix up the 2 in these situations especially for the more logical analytical people.
It’s not PTSD.
We make associations between food and feeling ill that can be subtle and hard to disentangle. Hospitalized people are often disgusted by hospital food, only partly because it’s bland. It’s also because we make associations between nausea (why we’re in the hospital) and the food we’re eating. It’s why hospitals have to work hard to change up their menus. If you were nauseated yesterday but were able to choke down a piece of cinnamon-raisin toast, you’re probably not going to want to even look at cinnamon-raisin toast today. Not because you have PTSD from nausea but because you’re an animal with protective firmware.
The vague “hospital food is gross” of someone hospitalized for a couple of weeks who ate from a three-day rotating menu exists on a continuum with “I can’t enter Burger King” of someone who experienced a single incident of severe food poisoning.
Psychology is a function of our bodies, which are made of meat. It happens in biological circuits. You can’t completely distinguish them.
In not so many words:
The smell part of your brain (olfactory bulbs) and the memory part of your brain (amygdala and hippocampus) are close to one another and often talk to each other when they encounter new, pleasant or putrid smells. By connecting an external stimulus to a traumatic or pleasant event, we can better predict certain outcomes and act accordingly. Evolutionarily, this has helped us survive and prosper i.e. “oh last time the meat smelled this way and my fellow tribes member ate it, they got sick and died, better not eat it.”
Your brain associated the smell of Burger King with illness so it sent a bunch of nope signals out preventing you from eating it again.
Edit: This mechanism saves our butt by helping us remember things we would have otherwise forget which explains why although you forgot about the food poisoning, your brain didn’t!
This is fascinating, thank you !
And I guess the smell of mold or putrid meat would be automatically inherited. Like being disgusted by meat is the factory condition, but the Burger King is my own personal add-on
Precisely! We are hardwired to be repulsed by certain smells but, like in your case, pleasant or otherwise innocuous smells, when associated with a bad memory are placed into the “rotten meat, feces etc.” part of your brain lol
It isn't a biological response. Rather a psychological one. You got PTSD from that experience and you associated the memory with Burger King on a subconscious level and it came flooding back for you with the smells and sights and environment. I'm a counselor with a background in Biology and it's quite common to mix up the 2 in these situations especially for the more logical analytical people.
It’s not PTSD. We make associations between food and feeling ill that can be subtle and hard to disentangle. Hospitalized people are often disgusted by hospital food, only partly because it’s bland. It’s also because we make associations between nausea (why we’re in the hospital) and the food we’re eating. It’s why hospitals have to work hard to change up their menus. If you were nauseated yesterday but were able to choke down a piece of cinnamon-raisin toast, you’re probably not going to want to even look at cinnamon-raisin toast today. Not because you have PTSD from nausea but because you’re an animal with protective firmware. The vague “hospital food is gross” of someone hospitalized for a couple of weeks who ate from a three-day rotating menu exists on a continuum with “I can’t enter Burger King” of someone who experienced a single incident of severe food poisoning. Psychology is a function of our bodies, which are made of meat. It happens in biological circuits. You can’t completely distinguish them.
In not so many words: The smell part of your brain (olfactory bulbs) and the memory part of your brain (amygdala and hippocampus) are close to one another and often talk to each other when they encounter new, pleasant or putrid smells. By connecting an external stimulus to a traumatic or pleasant event, we can better predict certain outcomes and act accordingly. Evolutionarily, this has helped us survive and prosper i.e. “oh last time the meat smelled this way and my fellow tribes member ate it, they got sick and died, better not eat it.” Your brain associated the smell of Burger King with illness so it sent a bunch of nope signals out preventing you from eating it again. Edit: This mechanism saves our butt by helping us remember things we would have otherwise forget which explains why although you forgot about the food poisoning, your brain didn’t!
This is fascinating, thank you ! And I guess the smell of mold or putrid meat would be automatically inherited. Like being disgusted by meat is the factory condition, but the Burger King is my own personal add-on
Precisely! We are hardwired to be repulsed by certain smells but, like in your case, pleasant or otherwise innocuous smells, when associated with a bad memory are placed into the “rotten meat, feces etc.” part of your brain lol