To understand where cravings come from, first we have to understand what they are. A food craving is a state of heightened eating motivation that is directed at a specific food. It’s not the same as hunger, which is not specific but motivation for calorie-containing food in general. Craving and hunger are distinct motivations that emerge from different brain circuits in response to specific cues. Every day we have to resist these insidious temptations and blame ourselves if we succumb to them. We think we’re weak and punish ourselves with unflattering thoughts if we are not strong enough to overcome them. However, cravings are not a weakness they are more of a biochemical request from our bodies sent for a specific reason.
Our brain isn’t simply wired to respond to food in general—it’s wired to be motivated by specific food properties, and the more concentrated they are, the higher the level of motivation. These instinctive drives evolved to guide our ancestors to the foods that kept them alive and fertile in challenging environments. Which was great when calorie-dense foods were hard to come by and required considerable effort to obtain, but that’s not the world we live in today. In the modern world, we still carry the powerful instinctive drives of our distant ancestors, but the food properties they make us crave are far more abundant and easier to get than ever before in our history.
We get certain cravings for different reasons, the first possible cause for your cravings is classical conditioning. Much like how the sound of a bell triggered Pavlov’s dogs to salivate, certain activities, people and places can trigger you to crave certain foods. For example, going to a movie and craving popcorn. Your body doesn’t need popcorn but if you have been eating popcorn at the movies throughout your life, you crave it when you are there. For many of us, cravings cravings can be psychological and kick into gear when we’re stressed or anxious. Carbohydrates boost our levels of the hormone serotonin, and recent research suggests that the combination of fat and sugar may also have a calming effect.
Understanding why you crave certain foods, stress or conditioning, allows you to manage them more effectively. Since cravings are driven by food-related sensory cues such as the sight and smell of tempting foods, the most straightforward way to beat them is to avoid exposing yourself to those cues. If tempting, unhealthy foods aren’t available in your personal surroundings, not only will they be harder to eat, but you’ll be less likely to crave them.
