I’ve never been seriously vitamin or mineral deficient so I don’t know. If I was vitamin C deficient would I crave limes? If I was vitamin D deficient, would I crave milt. Crave carrots if vitamin “A” deficient?
In other words does your body “know” to crave things it needs nutritionally by the way things taste, or not?
Not sure how this could be tested perfectly in humans … but anecdotally: if I’ve gone a few days without eating something healthy (too much fast food and snack machine garbage), I will crave a dark-green “kitchen sink” salad something fierce.
Interesting question.
People who have Addison’s Disease (adrenal insufficiency) and whose bodies lose salt as a consequence, may have very strong cravings for salt. Theirs is not the usual “I like salty foods” or “I know I put too much salt on things”. Instead, they will, literally, pour salt into their palm and lick it up. Another manifestation is for people with the condition to open a jar of old dill pickles, pick it up, and drink the brine! I kid you not.
Another fairly well described craving secondary to mineral deficiency occurs in people who are iron deficient. They may develop pica, especially for ice. Perhaps the ice soothes their inflamed tongues (with the latter being a manifestation of low iron). Zinc deficiency is also said to be associated with pica.(To be fair, I’ll not that there are those who believe pica actually causes the iron deficiency and not vice versa).
I’ve seen many people who are deficient in calcium and can’t say they crave anything consistently, if at all.
I’m not aware of any other mineral- or vitamin-specific cravings (except the salt mentioned above).
Here are some cites. Get out the toothpicks to prop your eyelids open:
"Patients were tested for ethanol production together with standard functional analysis techniques for vitamins B1, B2, and B6 and zinc and magnesium concentrations by sweat analysis using air/acetylene flame atomic absorption. Fifty normal subjects (group A) were analyzed against 30 positive patients by alcohol testing (group B). Statistical analysis, using the Wilcoxon Sum of Ranks test, revealed a remarkable and consistently high difference for vitamins and minerals between the two groups. In group B, 19 of 30 patients had four of five or five of five nutrients abnormal, and no subject with a positive alcohol test had less than two abnormal nutrients.
It is concluded that the syndrome that causes abnormal gut fermentation appears to have adverse effects on levels of B vitamins, zinc, and magnesium. As yet it is not clear whether this is a result of malabsorption, over-utilization, or excessive excretion. The level of ethanol production in this condition is low, but the presence of the nutritional deficits implies that the syndrome may cause quite significant adverse effects on health. More research in this area is required to replicate and extend these studies."
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cabi/phn/1999/00000002/0000003a/art00015
“A recent major theory was that a meal high in carbohydrate increased the rate that tryptophan enters the brain, leading to an increase in the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin that modulates mood. Although such a mechanism may be important under laboratory conditions it is unlikely to be of significance following the eating of any typical meal. As little as 2–4% of the calories of a meal as protein will prevent an increased availability of tryptophan. Arguably the food with the greatest impact on mood is chocolate. Those who crave chocolate tend to do so when they feel emotionally low. There have been a series of suggestions that chocolate’s mood elevating properties reflect ‘drug-like’ constituents including anandamines, caffeine, phenylethylamine and magnesium. However, the levels of these substances are so low as to preclude such influences. As all palatable foods stimulate endorphin release in the brain this is the most likely mechanism to account for the elevation of mood. A deficiency of many vitamins is associated with psychological symptoms. In some elderly patients folate deficiency is associated with depression. In four double-blind studies an improvement in thiamine status was associated with improved mood. Iron deficiency anaemia is common, particularly in women, and is associated with apathy, depression and rapid fatigue when exercising.”
Next is about chocolate cravings and what their source is: (HTML)
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=cache:7JNB0yrcnPwJ:https://www.solanova.com/downloads/abstracts_articles/Introduction%2520to%2520CoQ10%2520Final.pdf+vitamin+cravings+
*Chocolate may be used by some as a form of self-medication for dietary deficiencies (e.g., magnesium) or to balance low levels of neurotransmitters involved in the regulation of mood, food intake, and compulsive behaviors (e.g., serotonin and dopamine). *
Ok then what about vitamin D and milk as stated in the OP? Vitamin D is not normally found in milk, it’s artificially fortified. If you crave foods high in a certain nutrient, can your body recognize the presence of that nutrient in a food that would not normally contain it?
Well, I meant vitamin D is not naturally found in milk, it is normally found there.
Its amazing what you can find on the dope. I was just thinking about this myself a few days ago.
I don’t have any cites or anything, but a girl I knew in high school would crave clay, like the pottery kind. She went to the doctor and was told she craved the clay because she was iron deficient. I think she was diagnosed with Pica. That is all I know about that…
I don’t mean to hijack, but I would be interested in knowing whether your body can do it even more simply. If you don’t eat enough greens, or veggies, will your body crave them?
Although I’m not sure we can call it a “craving”, when they are sick with certain infections and other illnesses, chimpanzees and other animals will seek out specific plant (and mineral) substances to eat. This is called zoopharmacognosy (or animal self-medication). The link is fascinating and addresses some aspects of pica only touched on above.
New member here folks and this post was of some intrest to me.
I dunno if this is compariable, I suppose it is but any how, I am a diabetic about 5 years ago I switched my insulin and whilst i was getting my doese sorted I was finding that I was frequently being hypo (low blood sugar) I found a quick solution to this was to drink a sugar filled drink called Iron Bru (It’s a Scottish drink).
To this day whenever I suffer from a low blood sugar a tend to find that I actually crave Iron Bru. The difference I suppose is that I learned to associate low sugar with this as oppossed to simply craving it and not knowing why.
Are the cravings of pregnant women different from normal food cravings? I have an aunt who’d get the overwhelmingly compelling urge to eat dirt when she was pregnant.