To eat or not to eat: that is the question!

Feeding behaviour is not solely governed by metabolic need, but emerges from the integration of internal state, sensory input, competing motivational demands and prior experience. In this review, we synthesize current understanding of the neural and physiological mechanisms that shape feeding-related decision-making across species, with a focus on rodents. We first outline core homeostatic circuits that regulate energy balance and then consider how interoceptive and exteroceptive sensory signals inform feeding behaviour. We next examine appetitive influences, including reward and palatability, alongside aversive competing inputs, such as threat and stress. We then discuss how learning and memory shape feeding through experience-dependent processes, before considering how all of these signals converge in cortical valuation and integration circuits to guide food-related choices. Finally, we address how disruptions in these systems contribute to disorders, such as obesity, anorexia nervosa and binge-eating disorder, and evaluate how rodent models can be used to study underlying mechanisms while highlighting their limitations. Together, this framework positions feeding as a context-dependent decision-making process and highlights the need for integrative approaches to understand its dysregulation in disease.