Here's why you shouldn't give in to your cravings

We've all been in a situation where we've been craving for a brownie and we haven't been able to stop thinking about it until we got our hands on the brownie. Plenty of times we're told that a craving is our body's way of telling us that something (nutrients) is missing and needs to be added in the body. For example, pregnant women are told that when they have cravings it's because their baby needs that food.



But researchers are now contemplating if nutrient deficiency is really what a craving arises from. Say, you're craving for chocolate after a meal but then chocolate doesn't have anything of nutritional value so how could it be something that your body needs? Instead, researchers found that there might be significant other factors that contribute to cravings.



Microbe manipulation: “The gut microbes that are best at surviving inside us end up being more frequent in the next generation. They have the evolutionary advantage of being better at affecting us in ways that get us to preferentially feed them,” says one professor. These microbes can play a significant part in what we consume. For example, when you eat a slice of pizza the microbe will release feel-good hormones, whereas if you eat something you don't like the microbes might make you feel like you'll fall sick.



Cultural conditioning: Don't you always end up grabbing a tub of popcorn when you're at the movies or watching a TV show at home? How about when you grab something sweet after a meal? This is called cultural conditioning. Since you get used to eating certain things at certain times, your body starts craving for them. And this way you end up eating all the wrong things.



“Everywhere we go, we see adverts for food with lots of added sugar, and it’s easy to access these foods. This continual bombardment of advertising affects the brain – and smelling these foods primes the brain to want to eat them,” said one researcher.



What can be done about this you ask? Researchers conducted studies where they found that the best way for people to control cravings was to cut out that particular food from their diet. The less they eat that food, the less their body craved for it. This is also because their memories associated with the food also fade over time and thus it becomes a lot easier for them to avoid consuming those foods.