Food Craving Myth

Some of you may have come across this image recently from Stepintomygreenworld.com or other similar claims made on other websites.

THE CLAIM: Food cravings indicate a nutritional deficiency, that can be met by eating healthier alternatives.

THE REALITY: While this may seem at first glance to be a perfectly plausible claim, there are a few things that should raise suspicion. But first let's talk about what food cravings are and we will get back to that. A food craving is a spontaneous intense desire for a highly specific food. This is most commonly experienced by women, particularly during pregnancy, but can occur to anyone at any time.

The claim that a specific desire for a twixt candy bar at 2am, for instance, can be satiated by eating "fruits & Veggies", while it may be appealing to those wishing to live a healthier lifestyle, the notion that such a specific desire can be met with such non-specific categories as fruits and vegetables as if all had the same nutritional qualities should be met with a grain of salt (figuratively of course).

A 2005 article in Scientific American by Dr. Peter Pressman and Dr. Roger Clemens notes "These yearnings, and those associated with nonfoodstuffs such as pagophagia (the practice of consuming ice) and geophagia (literally, earth-eating), are not linked to any obvious nutrient insufficiency. In some individuals food cravings and dietary restriction may be related; however, these observations are inconsistent with the majority of published studies."

This raises the question, if not nutritional deficiency then what does cause cravings? Well? There may be an answer for this as well. The article continues "Researchers have employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the neural basis of cravings and the imaging data suggest that components of the amygdala, anterior cingulate, orbital frontal cortex, insula, hippocampus, caudate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are activated during periods of pining for food. It appears that there may be a network of neural regions that is involved with the emotion, memory and chemosensory stimuli of food craving."

The evidence points to a neurological rather than nutritional cause for cravings. These seem to be related to the hormones and stress levels that a person is experiencing which may go to explain why cravings are most common during pregnancy.

But for those who wish to combat these cravings, all hope is not lost. According to a 2010 press release from the Association for Psychological Science "Many research studies suggest that mental imagery may be a key component of food cravings — when people crave a specific food, they have vivid images of that food. Results of one study showed that the strength of participants’ cravings was linked to how vividly they imagined the food. Mental imagery (imagining food or anything else) takes up cognitive resources, or brain power. Studies have shown that when subjects are imagining something, they have a hard time completing various cognitive tasks."

...

"New research findings suggest that that this relationship may work in the opposite direction as well: It may be possible to use cognitive tasks to reduce food cravings. The results of one experiment revealed that volunteers who had been craving a food reported reduced food cravings after they formed images of common sights (for example, they were asked to imagine the appearance of a rainbow) or smells (they were asked to imagine the smell of eucalyptus). In another experiment, volunteers who were craving a food watched a flickering pattern of black and white dots on a monitor (similar to an untuned television set). After viewing the pattern, they reported a decrease in the vividness of their craved-food images as well as a reduction in their cravings."


Both links can be found below:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-food-cravings-the-bod/

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/the-psychology-of-food-cravings.html


-The Debunkist