Today for instance I have had a craving for something and I didn’t know what. I went to the grocery store and couldn’t find anything I wanted and I didn’t want any restaurant/fast food. Then I realized I wanted some kind of meat product (preferably beef) and when I was shopping I bypassed all the meats you had to eat with bread (hotdogs, balogna, sliced meats, hamburger, etc), so I bought 2 lbs of steak and now the craving is gone. This has happened to me before with a craving for steak, I have had cravings for particular foods and not known what kinds. For the record, my diet is very meat deficient, I eat alot of grain based foods.
Why do people have these particular cravings? I have always assumed that the food the person desires has some kind of nutrient or mineral in it that the person needs. I have heard the reason pregnant women desire pickles is because of the salt and I don’t know if this applies across the board to all cravings.
This site has a description of how sailors with scurvy reacted to finding fruit
“When sufferers got hold of the fruit they had been craving they swallowed it (said Walter) ‘with emotions of the most voluptuous luxury’…In the 18th century no one knew what caused scurvy”
This implies that scurvy suffers craved fruits, and this was before anyone knew that vitamin C deficiencies caused scurvy or that Vitamin C was found in fruits. We crave calories when we are starving, and we crave water when we are thirsty, so are our normal daily cravings based on some nutritional deficiency or are they based more on personal and cultural requirements (ie, someone subconsciously realizing that they haven’t eaten their 4 daily servings of grain today or me subconsiously thinking its time to eat more meat and less grains).
So why do we crave foods? Another example I have is that after I eat alot of high sugar foods like doritos and pepsi I have a craving for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with milk. I have noticed that I also feel alot less ‘run down’ after I eat this meal. I assume it has something to do with my insulin levels because milk and Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are high protein, low carb, high fat, low GI, high fiber foods, all of which should stabalize insulin levels. So after I eat a ton of sugar in the form of doritos and pepsi does my body crave something to stabalize insulin or am I just doing this because I have conditioned myself to do that?
There’s certainly theories that cravings are triggered by a nutritional need. I remain confident that my chocolate cravings are simply due to a need for magnesium. And nothing you can say will pry my sticky brown lips off the wrapper!
But the nutritional deficiency theory doesn’t address really strange cravings, or non-food cravings. This is called pica, and people will seek out and eat dirt, clay, even laundry soap, paint chips or cigarette butts! Sometimes during pregnancy this is due to an iron dificiency and goes away when iron is supplemented, but not always. The general consensus on the cause of pica seems to be a resounding “we dunno.”
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is believed that cravings that can be satisfied by a small amount of the desired food should be indulged. These are the ones that our body is signalling something important, like a deficiency. Cravings which do not go away with moderate consumption, on the other hand, indicate a severe imbalance, an allergy or an addiction, and are not beneficial to the body. So if you want potato chips and eating a handful does it for you, then go ahead and eat a handful. If you can’t stop until the bag is gone and you’re still looking for more, a Bad Thing may be happening.
They are loaded wtih carbs that have a GI of about 10-20 (excluding the bread carbs, which probably make up half of them). And I eat wheat bread, not white bread. And I normally eat 2 of the sandwiches so I am actually getting closer to 11-12g fiber when I eat them.
