I find myself thinking of an acquaintance who had adopted a pair of twins from an Eastern European country when they were about 3 years old. She told me that when she gave them their meal, they ate every bite on the plate; if she served them more, and more, they would continue to eat, no matter what. Like they weren't sure their next meal was coming, so they had to fill up as much as possible. One of them had health problems, too, and in the course of medical testing, they found that he had been born without one of his internal organs (spleen, maybe? I can't recall).

That kind of physical scarcity and deprivation, the effects of it, makes me think of the ramifications of emotional scarcity in childhood.