Cravings: If you have ever white-knuckled it through a diet only to fall face-first into a pan of brownies, then you are familiar with the dreaded craving.
Food can be a powerful reinforcer, some more so than others. Thoughts of chocolate ice cream will steer your cart into the frozen aisle, but rarely will a drive for fresh cauliflower hit you in quite the same way. The question is, why?
People eat for many reasons: taste, emotion, pleasure, social, tradition, and culture, just to name a few. We eat for many reasons other than hunger. Humans are highly complicated animals.
Cravings, Palatable Foods, & Hyperpalatable Foods:
One of the reasons we eat is for taste, and foods that please us when we eat them are called palatable. Palatable foods are a change from our ancestors who ate what was natural.
These foods tended to be less flavorful and less calorie-dense. For example, our ancestors had fruit and honey, but sugar wasn’t a staple until after the Industrial Revolution.
Now, we have what are called hyper-palatable foods. These foods have been strategically engineered to make you crave them.
These include ice cream, Doritos, chocolate, and French fries. They are specifically engineered to be highly appealing and pleasurable to the senses, particularly taste.
They are designed to trigger strong sensory responses, leading to heightened enjoyment and excessive consumption. For example, Lay’s potato chips: “Bet you can’t just eat one” (insert eye-roll…thanks a lot, Lay’s).
Cravings & Processed Foods:
These foods often contain high sugar, fat, and salt levels. They are also highly processed and usually contain additives, preservatives, and flavor enhancers that intensify taste.
These foods even have manufactured textures that are creamy, crunchy, and chewy. They are engineered, even down to the color of the cheese or how the powder feels on your fingertips.
Craving & Advertising:
As if that wasn’t enough, Big Food spends over 70 billion dollars annually on advertising, digital media, print, and outdoor advertising.
Most of that advertising is strategically placed. It targets kids and families during typical viewing times, highlighting products’ taste, convenience, and appeal.
Cravings & Where They Come From:
You need to understand neuroscience and history to understand why this issue exists. Cravings are a physiological response embedded in our hippocampus by survival instincts. These instincts are passed down by genetic coding from our ancestors, which our brains have developed over the centuries.
As hunter-gatherers, we were rewarded by finding the most calorie-dense foods to survive with limited resources. When you don’t know when your next meal will run by, you must constantly look for resources.
This high-calorie food-finding skill was programmed by our brains into our DNA and passed down by our ancestors. This successful behavior was rewarded with survival. If you walked 20 miles and burned 800 calories but were rewarded for that walk by gathering a 30-calorie head of lettuce, then the effort was inefficient.
If humans had made choices based on food rewards that provided little energy, the human species would never have lasted. We were rewarded by finding the most calorie-dense foods and utilizing as few calories or energy as possible.
Our brains create flavor preferences and food choices based on these food rewards. These rewards elicited physical and psychological behaviors reinforced by these high-calorie foods. Once this happens, associations with those rewards evolve, and cravings result.
Our biology has conditioned us, based on survival, to crave these things because they represent a better chance of survival. Food like salt, sugar, fat, and protein all have associations based on their calorie content. Our brain sends a hit of dopamine when we eat these foods.
This eating strategy is fantastic when you have limited resources. Our brains developed cues because we needed to find calorically dense foods to retain our energy stores. In modern times, when slight hunger hits, all we have to do is hunt down the bread and gather the meat from the deli drawer. We hardly have to work for our meals anymore.
With modern conveniences, our reason for movement is motivated primarily by our mental state versus the need to feed ourselves.
Cravings & Convenience:
Convenience eating was never an issue for humans until we started to engineer foods. We didn’t engineer food to mimic what we would find in nature. Instead, to get the most energy or calorie density from these foods.
Foods were created purely for taste versus energy or nutrient density. We began to engineer foods by combining fat and sugar. We made food like cake, muffins, bread, chips, etc., but we no longer have to “earn” our meals.
With a greater focus on convenience foods, we have developed more processed foods. This minimizes the time spent prepping and cooking meals. Fast food, processed food, semi-prepared, and convenience foods are everywhere.
The result is that the average American eats out or away from home at least 40% of the time. It is thought that, on average, Americans ate out around 20% in 1950.
The average sodium intake from one meal outside the home is between 1200 and 2400mg. This is a significant portion of the daily recommended 2300mg.
For sugar, the average is 10-20g more sugar per meal compared to home-cooked meals. Sugary beverages like soda, sweetened teas, and specialty coffee drinks can add 40g of sugar or more in a single drink. The American Heart Association recommends no more than 25g of sugar for women daily.
Higher fat in meals cooked outside the home tends to be attributed to cooking methods. Restaurants often use more butter, oils, and fats to flavor dishes. Restaurants also tend to serve larger portions than a person might serve at home. Many meals out are at fast-food restaurants. Meals consumed outside the home generally contain 8-10g more fat on average per meal compared to home-cooked meals.
When Americans eat at home, it is thought that 70% of the food consumed is still processed. Examples are canned vegetables, snack foods and crackers, frozen meals, and sugary cereals. All these examples increase salt, sugar, fat, and overall calorie content.
Why is it Such a Big Deal if Food is More Palatable?
The reality is the more palatable a food is, the more we tend to eat. This increase in calories is partly due to the lack of satiety. In contrast, let’s look at the diet made famous by Chris Voight in 2010. This excerpt on Chris Voight’s diet was taken from the book The Hungry Brain by Stephan J. Guyenet, Ph.D.
“In 2010, Chris Voight, the director of the Washington State Potato Commission, decided to eat a diet of nothing but potatoes and a small amount of oil for sixty days. Voight argued that potatoes were quite nutritious and could contain health for months.
He documented his journey on the website 20 Potatoes a Day. His website represented the number of potatoes he would have to eat to maintain his weight. Voight ate the starchy, bland, repetitive diet for 60 days. Although he didn’t do it to lose weight, he lost 21 pounds.
Physical exams done before and after his diet showed that his blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels improved considerably.
Voight had trouble eating his 20 potatoes because he said he just wasn’t hungry. The 20 lb number was set to meet his prior energy requirements. Voight’s weight loss can be largely attributed to the satiety index. Potatoes are among the highest foods for helping people feel full.”
In contrast to Voight’s diet, Americans will change the palatability of foods like potatoes by “reengineering” their taste. They add salt, butter (fat), and even more, changing their palatability, satiety, and calorie density.
A more bland whole food like a plain potato will elicit cues when you are full. A more palatable food makes it harder for the brain to signal a person to stop eating. This happens because the brain senses it can obtain more calories.
I would challenge anyone to eat a plate full of plain potatoes by itself and not be wholly stuffed when they are done.
What Can You Do to Minimize Cravings?
- Focus most of your diet on fresh and whole foods. Shop the outside ring of the grocery store, where you find fresh produce, meat, and dairy. Minimize eating foods in the aisles where food tends to be more processed, so more calorie-dense
- Stay hydrated. Thirst can sometimes mask itself as hunger, causing you to eat more than usual. Try having water before you eat to ensure you aren’t acting on thirst signals.
- Eat your protein! It’s very satiating and will keep you from being less hungry. It will also make you less likely to get grabby with the snacks.
- Get plenty of sleep. As every Mom of an infant knows, sleep deprivation can increase hunger and cravings. This is especially true for high-sugar, because the brain is looking for quick energy.
- Limit trigger foods. I’m not a fan of saying you can’t have something. That makes you want it more, but give yourself some space. If you are triggered by ice cream, then by all means, have ice cream. Just don’t make it super easy by keeping it in the house. Put space between you and your trigger. Make yourself get up and go to the store every time you want that trigger food. Doing this will force you to decide if it’s worth the effort.
- Try a healthy substitution. Not always, but sometimes, finding healthier versions is just as satisfying.
Conclusion:
Understanding food cravings involves recognizing their origins and the complexities of modern eating habits. Historically, cravings were crucial for survival, driving our ancestors to seek high-calorie foods. However, in today’s world of engineered, hyper-palatable food options, these cravings can lead to overeating and associated health issues.
Focusing on whole, nutrient-dense, high-protein foods and staying hydrated are essential ways to manage cravings effectively.
Prioritizing sleep and managing stress also play significant roles in curbing the urge to snack. Additionally, creating barriers to trigger foods and finding healthier substitutions can help maintain control over eating behaviors.
Adopting these strategies can better align your eating habits with your nutritional needs and overall health goals. This leads to a more balanced and fulfilling relationship with food. Remember, the goal is not to eliminate cravings but to manage them to support your well-being.
