I remember my class was reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Our teacher explained why that poor kid was putting molasses on everything. He said that the kid had worms and therefore a iron deficiency, he was poring molasses on everything to get more iron.
I want to know if our bodies really do that. Lets say I drank milk everyday. I never drank it for the calcium or other nutrients. One day I stopped drinking milk. I got sick or something because of the lack of calcium or something. Would my body start craving milk? Do we get subconscience craving for things because of the nutrients they give us? How well does the body use craving and other methods to get us to eat the foods we need?
Depends on the human and the body. My guess is that the average American is more likely to want foods based on his or her idea about that food than from animal instinct.
The example from “To Kill a Mocking Bird” sounds reasonable. We certainly know that people can develop an aversion to foods.
I don’t think the body is that picky about cravings. I think the body has a more is better attitude, especially for garlic bread.
It’s pretty well known that modern people who are thirsty will often want food. Is that the body not recognizing its need? Or it that people recognizing a “need” and out-voting the body to get French fries instead of orange juice?
There’s some debate about whether women with a bun in the oven crave hot cross buns because they need that food, or because they are have hormonal emotional responses, or both, or something else.
In my own personal experience, if I crave sweets and especially chocolate (which I don’t particularly like) it’s always a bad sign. I craved chocolate when I had pneumonia and when I was anemic, and there is nothing in chocolate that will help either of those conditions.
Additionally, when I’m in really good shape, I become a really picky eater and just don’t want as much food and reject a lot of foods. Don’t know if this means my body doesn’t want certain foods, or if I just don’t want that many calories.
People with allergy problems sometimes crave or eat a lot of foods that are perhaps not the best thing for them, but the why on this is debated.
While my mother was pregnant with me she had a strange desire to suck on lumps of coal. She had no idea why. When she told her doctor, he checked her iron levels which turned out to be low. He uped her iron pills and the desire was gone. She didn’t know that coal contained iron.
** How well does the body use craving and other methods to get us to eat the foods we need?**
In general, the answer is not at all.
Vitamin D deficiency does not cause people to crave sunlight.
Vitamin C deficiency does not cause people to crave citrus fruit or rosehips.
Iron deficiency, rather than causing a craving for iron rich foods, can bring on all sorts of unrelated cravings, such as the desire to eat ice or dirt.
So we never crave foods we actually need, or is our craving “system” just not too good?
Dogs eat their our poop for protein (or something), do they know their droppings contain protein, or is it a side-effect like when we have an iron deficiency?
A little more out of the way question…
We add salt to foods to make them taste better, is it possible that us liking how salt makes food tastes is just a way for the body to get the sodium it needs?