Got Cravings?

Diana Etwaru

Have you ever just been chilling on the couch watching some Grey’s Anatomy and you suddenly crave some chocolate cake? (Don’t lie, you know you have.) Even though you’re watching Meredith shove her hand in someone’s body cavity, you can’t stop thinking about the smell and taste of the chocolate cake. What’s the difference between being hungry and having a craving? What causes us to have these random cravings? Is there a way to stop our cravings, or help avoid eating the (probably) unhealthy foods we want to eat? Here are some answer to these burning questions.

Mayo Clinic describes several differences between hunger and cravings. Basically, when you’re hungry, this feeling won’t pass until you’ve satisfied your hunger. However, if you don’t give into your craving, eventually it will go away. Your cravings are also usually towards one specific food (i.e. that decadent, rich chocolate cake), while when you’re hungry you’ll eat anything (maybe even a horse). So now we know some differences between hunger and cravings, but why does doing certain things like watching tv make us want to eat specific foods?

When I’m stressed out from the amount of work I have, I usually grab a bag of cheetos and watch some videos of cats playing the piano. I know very well that eating a full bag in one sitting isn’t the best thing for my health, but I do it anyways. It isn’t because I don’t want to be healthy. There are various reasons and studies explaining why we crave foods, but one of the main reasons is that fulfilling our cravings makes us happy! When we eat carbohydrates, it releases serotonin which gives us the feeling of being happy. But of course this happiness only lasts a certain amount of time. Like with drugs, once we hit the peak happiness, we sink back down to how we were originally feeling, possible even lower. And to combat this, we consume more carbs to stay happy, and the cycle repeats itself. Not to mention, eating a bag of cheetos or a bar of chocolate isn’t going to help you stay healthy.

As mentioned before, Mayo Clinic stated that cravings do go away after some time, but how do I quiet the little monster inside my brain telling me to eat the whole cake? There are many different ways to do so. One way is to keep whatever you’re craving out of your house. Now that I don’t have cheetos around to easily grab, I stopped craving them. Another way is to drink more water. Sometimes our cravings are caused by dehydration- so hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! (Plus drinking lots of water has a bunch of other benefits) Some cravings are signs from our bodies that we’re actually lacking something important. There are a plethora of charts online that tell you what you should eat based on what you’re craving.

Of course it isn’t the end of the world if you give into your cravings a few times. It just isn’t the best idea to make it a habit of doing so. Try some of these the next time you’re craving pepperoni pizza with stuffed crusts while watching Netflix.

One chart explaining your cravings