March 11, 2009 • 14 mins
Whether you're longing for cupcakes or chicken wings, food cravings are to blame. Why do we hanker for certain foods? Do women crave more than men? Delve into the tasty topic of food cravings in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from house top works dot com. Hey there, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly.
(00:21):
I made a mistake this morning my breakfast choices. I
decided to give in to craving. I had for greasy
biscuits and breakfast meat, and I bought some really low
quality breakfast food at a nearby um eatery. And I
do not feel fantastic through craving backfired on you, backfired
(00:43):
big time. See. I had the opposite experience this morning.
I craved some waffles. I had the waffles. They were delicious.
Oh well, good for you, Molly. But I think the
reason that we're both I don't know, maybe very obsessed
with our food cravings this morning, is that that's our
topic today. Yeah, I mean like he was on our mind.
I was thinking about the kinds of foods I crave
the most. Yeah, and so I was definitely. I've been
(01:05):
thinking about icing a lot lately and thinking about food
cravings because I I like icing. Yeah, I'm more of
a savory person. Really, which which is actually sort of
strange because, um, most women crave sweet foods, least women
in North America, whereas most men crave the savory side
of things. Maybe I've I don't know, I don't know
(01:27):
if that's as a female, you're much more likely to
have any food craving at all. I mean, basically a
hundred percent of women have had a food craving at
some point, right, whereas a study from Monell Chemical Sensus
Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that only of
men experienced food cravings. Now, I feel that food cravings
are something that you know, our moms do tell us about,
(01:50):
contrary to most of our topics. You know. I feel
like my mom always said, you know, they're gonna be
certain times in the month when you're just gonna need
more chocolate than other times. And so, you know, around
certain times in the month, I might find myself at
the grocery store with like six tups of ice cream.
I feel like it just happens to women because of
what Kristen bones everything. It's hormones, um well, the thing
(02:12):
that I hear about the most, and I think it's
not that uncommon to ask your mom what she craved
when she was pregnant with you. I think that my
mom craved halapenos, which is weird because I don't really
have much of a spicy palette. Apparently my mom ate
entire boxes of donuts in one sitting. I could do
that now. And it makes sense that women have these
(02:34):
really bizarre cravings when they're pregnant, because that's the time
when female hormones are really kicked into overdrive. It's a
roller coaster of hormones. It is a roller coaster. And
while we usually hear about things like hallepenos, nachos, boxes
of doughnuts being eaten, um, a lot of pregnant women
(02:54):
actually go for more simple things. There's a condition called
pica that a lot of pregnant women experience, and pica
is a physiological eating disorder characterized by the desire to
eat non food items such as ice and dirt and clay,
(03:16):
and a study of pregnant women experiencing pika found that
about half of them ate eight ice, which is called
paga phasia, and the other fifteen percent said that they
ate some form of dirt, clay, or corn starch, which
is called geophasia. Right and I guess there's this theory
that the reason women might be inclined to eat some
of these things is because of iron deficiency, and they
(03:37):
can get iron from soils. Basically, Um, other researchers think
it might be more about textures. But you know, pregnant
women have all sorts of weird cravings, their senses change.
And basically, what I've heard is that people think it
might be because the fetus is basically bagging them towards
what the body needs. But morely, that actually contradicts what
most scientists have now concluded about food cravings, That it's
(04:00):
we don't crave foods that our bodies need. We don't
crave food for nutrition. It's purely pleasure driven. So my
body doesn't crave waffles because it needs waffles now, no,
nor does your body need icing, Molly Um. Food cravings
are driven by our hedonic or pleasurable aspects of eating.
(04:21):
It's a completely different thing from actual hunger. When you're hungry,
your body is telling you that you need to eat
food for nutritional value and to you know, keep your
body running. But when you experience food craving, it's purely
driven by your mind. Right, So since women are more
(04:41):
likely to experience these food cravings. Let's talk about the
difference between hunger and food craving, so that way maybe
we know when to you uh, tell our bodies to
stop craving icing. Well, when you get hungry, what basically
what happens in your body is that your blood sugar
and insulin levels drop once you've digested all of your food,
and then your body releases a hormone called greenland, which
(05:05):
then signals the hypothalamus in the brain to release yet
another hormone called neuropeptide why. And neuropeptide why simulates your
appetite makes you want to eat um, and so you
start eating. You know you're eating your food, and then
all of a sudden, you start feeling full and you
(05:26):
want to put your fork down. The reason why you
feel full is because your fat cells, once they can
tell that you've eaten enough food and satisfied your your
body's needs, your fat cells release a hormone called leptin,
and then leptin triggers yet one more hormone called probrio
melano corton that suppresses the appetite. And when all these
(05:50):
appetite suppressants and hormones are ran through the body of
the brain is also monitoring things like our insulin level,
our blood sugar level, so that's when um all our
level sort of stabilized. That's how you know you're full.
It can take a little while, but that's hunger. But
from what I understand, Christen, there's no one hormone that's
just gonna make you crave food, right. Food cravings is
(06:10):
a pretty complex um mental process that is actually the
same brain activity that happens um when you take drugs.
Really yeah, so icing is sort of like crack, kind
of like it, Molly. Um. It's all based on your
dopamine reward system, and that's the um release of hormones
(06:33):
in your brain that just give you those pure senses
of pleasure. It's associated with things like sex, compulsive gambling,
and like I said, you know, uh, drug activity, although
all those things aren't necessarily healthy, just like food cravings. UM.
And the other thing that is going on in your brain,
as I understand, is that the hippocampus. Every time you're
having these intense feelings of reward and wonderfulness, the hippo
(06:55):
campus is helping you like take a mental memory of it. Right,
So you remember how awesome cupcakes are. Right, So you're
building all of these positive associations with you know, how
how good that chocolate made you feel after a long
day at work. And also, well that's going on, a
part of your brain called the insula is monitoring um
your emotions based on your physical state. So you are,
(07:19):
you know, you're eating this chocolate, You're feeling good, and
the insula is recognizing that as well. And then once
all that is happening and uh and your brains recognizing
you know that you're you're feeling pretty good, the caudate
nucleus then triggers that dopamine reward system for the feelings
of um uh satisfaction that we get from food cravings.
(07:41):
That is then probably followed by immense guilt like I
had about eating a lot of breakfast meat this morning.
And I never have guilt about I sing. But the
thing I do know, if I know one thing about
drugs is that they're addictive, and so you need more
and more things eventually to start getting your fixed right.
And I mean basically, if you start craving chocolate and
(08:02):
you just have a bite of it, that's never going
to be enough. And that cycle can play a big
role in UM creating patterns such as stress eating. You know,
if you have a bad day at work, you immediately
just want to go out and eat an entire box
of doughnuts. Okay, that's because our emotional state UM normally
has a greater impact on cravings than hunger. Gotcha, but
(08:26):
I want cupcakes when I'm sad, when I'm happy, I
want them all the time, Kristen, But why do I
want them? Was I born with the love of cupcakes?
You were? Well, you were born with a love of
cupcakes in a way, Molly, because babies UM are born
with a preference for sweet taste. UM scientists think that
(08:47):
this innate food craving and desire that really spans all
cultures UM. Everywhere across the globe. People experience food cravings,
and I think that it is because we develop UM
this desire for high calorie nutrition in the womb, because
the what we eat in the womb is energy dents.
And you can start to figure out different taste while
(09:09):
you're in the womb, like about the second trimester, that's
when you start saying, oh mom had garlic, or oh
mom had donuts, like my mom did right. And there
was a study that found that if a mother recently
ate garlic, for instance, um while she was nursing, the
baby actually drank the breast milk over longer periods of
(09:29):
time as though they were trying to figure out what
that new flavor was. So even when we're in really
when we're very young, we're trying to detect new new
flavors that we that we like. And then as if
our moms didn't warp us enough in the womb and
when they were nursing, the rest of our food cravings
basically come from like happy memories of our childhood. So
(09:50):
if you know, I must have had some great day
once upon a time where I got cupcakes, and as
a result, I associate them with comfort and good times.
And that link between emotions, memory and food explains why
you only crave foods that you've had before. I will
never crave your mom's macaroni and cheese because I've never
had it. Have you had craft macaroni and cheese, because
(10:13):
then you have Uh So, if we if we want
all these energy dense foods, but at the same time
we're trying to watch our weight, you know, I mean,
our body is really, our brady and brain are working
against us. Right, And this comes back to sort of
why food cravings can be such a huge pomb for women.
It's because if you've ever had a diet, then you
(10:33):
probably have found yourself trying to stave off your cravings.
You've got to figure out how to manage your cravings
to have a good diet, right right. Psychologist and nutritionists
advise um against going cold turkey with your cravings. If
I've got you know, if you've got a chocolate fixed Molly,
and you are trying to cut down the pounds, you
can't just get rid of all the chocolate because at
(10:55):
some point you're just gonna give in and you're gonna
eat way more than you should have, and it's alway
is going to be on your mind. Instead, you should
just give in on occasion, and um, the key is
limiting the frequency. There was a six month study on
weight loss and the participants who were actually able to
lose the most weight didn't resist all of their food cravings,
(11:18):
but rather gave in every now and then, and they
were the ones who are able to keep up with
that weight loss um most successfully. Yeah, And another study
I found really encouraging for my sweet tooth is that
found basically, Spanish women eat more chocolate than American women,
just like on a regular basis, and as a result,
they have much many fewer cravings for it, basically because
(11:38):
you know, it's part of their diet, right, it's not
some special thing that you associate with, you know, good times.
It's just oh, it's like eating rice for me. It's
just just eating their brown rice. But I will say
one thing that you know, if you're ever in a
relationship and you're trying to sort of, um maybe have
a little weight loss competition male to female, it is
(12:00):
going to trip you up much more than it's gonna
trip up males. Right. That's because men have um fewer
food cravings. Right, Like we said at the beginning, UM,
only seventy men really have any food cravings at all. Well,
I have your food cravings. But in a pretty interesting
study that was just published in Time magazine, not only
do they have your food cravings, but if they do
have a food craving, they can turn it off much
(12:21):
easier than women can. Uh. In this study, men and
women were both asked to fast, and they were both
taught this um mechanism of cognitive suppression to deal with
food cravings. And then while they're very hungry, they interviewed
both the men the women on their favorite foods. And
so let's say that they interviewed me and they're like, oh,
(12:42):
you know, I really like cupcakes. So after my fasting,
they hooked me up to some brain scanners. They put
a cupcake in front of me and they said, we
baked this fresh. You've been so hungry, and they're like,
we use the best cream cheese icing on this cupcake.
It's red velvet, which happens to be a particular favorite
(13:02):
of mine. And then they watched my brain and they
did they let you eat it? They don't. They just
watched your brain as an evil study. That's why studies
are awful. Um. But so my brain is firing, like
I'm trying to use the methods they taught me to
suppress my food craving. And even though it might have
tricked myself into saying, oh, I'm not hungry, I don't
(13:23):
want that cupcake, my brain is telling a different story.
Whereas we're men's brains O, men's brains just went dormant,
which makes just say something about men but um no,
they were able to use their methods to be like,
I don't want that, even though it's my favorite thing. Ever,
so it seems like for women, food cravings or just
something that it's it's just a fact of life. We
(13:44):
just gotta do with one of those things. So instead
of trying to, you know, get rid of our food cravings,
it's all about management. So maybe things like keeping cupcakes
out of the house or avoiding you know, certain restaurants
you know that uh serve gravy, that serve gravy, right,
because things like site, smell, time of day, all of
(14:05):
that can trigger these food cravings that we need to
be aware of. So frankly, I found this podcast pretty
encouraging because it means I can still eat cupcakes. Yeah,
and now all that talk about red velvet cupcakes, I
kind of want one, craving one. Yeah, let's I think,
let's get out of here and go eat cupcakes. So well,
we're out grabbing a cupcake. Why don't you head on
(14:25):
over and read the article on through cravings at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Because it has stuff works dot com
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(14:45):
It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from house top works dot com. Hey there, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly.
(00:21):
I made a mistake this morning my breakfast choices. I
decided to give in to craving. I had for greasy
biscuits and breakfast meat, and I bought some really low
quality breakfast food at a nearby um eatery. And I
do not feel fantastic through craving backfired on you, backfired
(00:43):
big time. See. I had the opposite experience this morning.
I craved some waffles. I had the waffles. They were delicious.
Oh well, good for you, Molly. But I think the
reason that we're both I don't know, maybe very obsessed
with our food cravings this morning, is that that's our
topic today. Yeah, I mean like he was on our mind.
I was thinking about the kinds of foods I crave
the most. Yeah, and so I was definitely. I've been
(01:05):
thinking about icing a lot lately and thinking about food
cravings because I I like icing. Yeah, I'm more of
a savory person. Really, which which is actually sort of
strange because, um, most women crave sweet foods, least women
in North America, whereas most men crave the savory side
of things. Maybe I've I don't know, I don't know
(01:27):
if that's as a female, you're much more likely to
have any food craving at all. I mean, basically a
hundred percent of women have had a food craving at
some point, right, whereas a study from Monell Chemical Sensus
Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that only of
men experienced food cravings. Now, I feel that food cravings
are something that you know, our moms do tell us about,
(01:50):
contrary to most of our topics. You know. I feel
like my mom always said, you know, they're gonna be
certain times in the month when you're just gonna need
more chocolate than other times. And so, you know, around
certain times in the month, I might find myself at
the grocery store with like six tups of ice cream.
I feel like it just happens to women because of
what Kristen bones everything. It's hormones, um well, the thing
(02:12):
that I hear about the most, and I think it's
not that uncommon to ask your mom what she craved
when she was pregnant with you. I think that my
mom craved halapenos, which is weird because I don't really
have much of a spicy palette. Apparently my mom ate
entire boxes of donuts in one sitting. I could do
that now. And it makes sense that women have these
(02:34):
really bizarre cravings when they're pregnant, because that's the time
when female hormones are really kicked into overdrive. It's a
roller coaster of hormones. It is a roller coaster. And
while we usually hear about things like hallepenos, nachos, boxes
of doughnuts being eaten, um, a lot of pregnant women
(02:54):
actually go for more simple things. There's a condition called
pica that a lot of pregnant women experience, and pica
is a physiological eating disorder characterized by the desire to
eat non food items such as ice and dirt and clay,
(03:16):
and a study of pregnant women experiencing pika found that
about half of them ate eight ice, which is called
paga phasia, and the other fifteen percent said that they
ate some form of dirt, clay, or corn starch, which
is called geophasia. Right and I guess there's this theory
that the reason women might be inclined to eat some
of these things is because of iron deficiency, and they
(03:37):
can get iron from soils. Basically, Um, other researchers think
it might be more about textures. But you know, pregnant
women have all sorts of weird cravings, their senses change.
And basically, what I've heard is that people think it
might be because the fetus is basically bagging them towards
what the body needs. But morely, that actually contradicts what
most scientists have now concluded about food cravings, That it's
(04:00):
we don't crave foods that our bodies need. We don't
crave food for nutrition. It's purely pleasure driven. So my
body doesn't crave waffles because it needs waffles now, no,
nor does your body need icing, Molly Um. Food cravings
are driven by our hedonic or pleasurable aspects of eating.
(04:21):
It's a completely different thing from actual hunger. When you're hungry,
your body is telling you that you need to eat
food for nutritional value and to you know, keep your
body running. But when you experience food craving, it's purely
driven by your mind. Right, So since women are more
(04:41):
likely to experience these food cravings. Let's talk about the
difference between hunger and food craving, so that way maybe
we know when to you uh, tell our bodies to
stop craving icing. Well, when you get hungry, what basically
what happens in your body is that your blood sugar
and insulin levels drop once you've digested all of your food,
and then your body releases a hormone called greenland, which
(05:05):
then signals the hypothalamus in the brain to release yet
another hormone called neuropeptide why. And neuropeptide why simulates your
appetite makes you want to eat um, and so you
start eating. You know you're eating your food, and then
all of a sudden, you start feeling full and you
(05:26):
want to put your fork down. The reason why you
feel full is because your fat cells, once they can
tell that you've eaten enough food and satisfied your your
body's needs, your fat cells release a hormone called leptin,
and then leptin triggers yet one more hormone called probrio
melano corton that suppresses the appetite. And when all these
(05:50):
appetite suppressants and hormones are ran through the body of
the brain is also monitoring things like our insulin level,
our blood sugar level, so that's when um all our
level sort of stabilized. That's how you know you're full.
It can take a little while, but that's hunger. But
from what I understand, Christen, there's no one hormone that's
just gonna make you crave food, right. Food cravings is
(06:10):
a pretty complex um mental process that is actually the
same brain activity that happens um when you take drugs.
Really yeah, so icing is sort of like crack, kind
of like it, Molly. Um. It's all based on your
dopamine reward system, and that's the um release of hormones
(06:33):
in your brain that just give you those pure senses
of pleasure. It's associated with things like sex, compulsive gambling,
and like I said, you know, uh, drug activity, although
all those things aren't necessarily healthy, just like food cravings. UM.
And the other thing that is going on in your brain,
as I understand, is that the hippocampus. Every time you're
having these intense feelings of reward and wonderfulness, the hippo
(06:55):
campus is helping you like take a mental memory of it. Right,
So you remember how awesome cupcakes are. Right, So you're
building all of these positive associations with you know, how
how good that chocolate made you feel after a long
day at work. And also, well that's going on, a
part of your brain called the insula is monitoring um
your emotions based on your physical state. So you are,
(07:19):
you know, you're eating this chocolate, You're feeling good, and
the insula is recognizing that as well. And then once
all that is happening and uh and your brains recognizing
you know that you're you're feeling pretty good, the caudate
nucleus then triggers that dopamine reward system for the feelings
of um uh satisfaction that we get from food cravings.
(07:41):
That is then probably followed by immense guilt like I
had about eating a lot of breakfast meat this morning.
And I never have guilt about I sing. But the
thing I do know, if I know one thing about
drugs is that they're addictive, and so you need more
and more things eventually to start getting your fixed right.
And I mean basically, if you start craving chocolate and
(08:02):
you just have a bite of it, that's never going
to be enough. And that cycle can play a big
role in UM creating patterns such as stress eating. You know,
if you have a bad day at work, you immediately
just want to go out and eat an entire box
of doughnuts. Okay, that's because our emotional state UM normally
has a greater impact on cravings than hunger. Gotcha, but
(08:26):
I want cupcakes when I'm sad, when I'm happy, I
want them all the time, Kristen, But why do I
want them? Was I born with the love of cupcakes?
You were? Well, you were born with a love of
cupcakes in a way, Molly, because babies UM are born
with a preference for sweet taste. UM scientists think that
(08:47):
this innate food craving and desire that really spans all
cultures UM. Everywhere across the globe. People experience food cravings,
and I think that it is because we develop UM
this desire for high calorie nutrition in the womb, because
the what we eat in the womb is energy dents.
And you can start to figure out different taste while
(09:09):
you're in the womb, like about the second trimester, that's
when you start saying, oh mom had garlic, or oh
mom had donuts, like my mom did right. And there
was a study that found that if a mother recently
ate garlic, for instance, um while she was nursing, the
baby actually drank the breast milk over longer periods of
(09:29):
time as though they were trying to figure out what
that new flavor was. So even when we're in really
when we're very young, we're trying to detect new new
flavors that we that we like. And then as if
our moms didn't warp us enough in the womb and
when they were nursing, the rest of our food cravings
basically come from like happy memories of our childhood. So
(09:50):
if you know, I must have had some great day
once upon a time where I got cupcakes, and as
a result, I associate them with comfort and good times.
And that link between emotions, memory and food explains why
you only crave foods that you've had before. I will
never crave your mom's macaroni and cheese because I've never
had it. Have you had craft macaroni and cheese, because
(10:13):
then you have Uh So, if we if we want
all these energy dense foods, but at the same time
we're trying to watch our weight, you know, I mean,
our body is really, our brady and brain are working
against us. Right, And this comes back to sort of
why food cravings can be such a huge pomb for women.
It's because if you've ever had a diet, then you
(10:33):
probably have found yourself trying to stave off your cravings.
You've got to figure out how to manage your cravings
to have a good diet, right right. Psychologist and nutritionists
advise um against going cold turkey with your cravings. If
I've got you know, if you've got a chocolate fixed Molly,
and you are trying to cut down the pounds, you
can't just get rid of all the chocolate because at
(10:55):
some point you're just gonna give in and you're gonna
eat way more than you should have, and it's alway
is going to be on your mind. Instead, you should
just give in on occasion, and um, the key is
limiting the frequency. There was a six month study on
weight loss and the participants who were actually able to
lose the most weight didn't resist all of their food cravings,
(11:18):
but rather gave in every now and then, and they
were the ones who are able to keep up with
that weight loss um most successfully. Yeah, And another study
I found really encouraging for my sweet tooth is that
found basically, Spanish women eat more chocolate than American women,
just like on a regular basis, and as a result,
they have much many fewer cravings for it, basically because
(11:38):
you know, it's part of their diet, right, it's not
some special thing that you associate with, you know, good times.
It's just oh, it's like eating rice for me. It's
just just eating their brown rice. But I will say
one thing that you know, if you're ever in a
relationship and you're trying to sort of, um maybe have
a little weight loss competition male to female, it is
(12:00):
going to trip you up much more than it's gonna
trip up males. Right. That's because men have um fewer
food cravings. Right, Like we said at the beginning, UM,
only seventy men really have any food cravings at all. Well,
I have your food cravings. But in a pretty interesting
study that was just published in Time magazine, not only
do they have your food cravings, but if they do
have a food craving, they can turn it off much
(12:21):
easier than women can. Uh. In this study, men and
women were both asked to fast, and they were both
taught this um mechanism of cognitive suppression to deal with
food cravings. And then while they're very hungry, they interviewed
both the men the women on their favorite foods. And
so let's say that they interviewed me and they're like, oh,
(12:42):
you know, I really like cupcakes. So after my fasting,
they hooked me up to some brain scanners. They put
a cupcake in front of me and they said, we
baked this fresh. You've been so hungry, and they're like,
we use the best cream cheese icing on this cupcake.
It's red velvet, which happens to be a particular favorite
(13:02):
of mine. And then they watched my brain and they
did they let you eat it? They don't. They just
watched your brain as an evil study. That's why studies
are awful. Um. But so my brain is firing, like
I'm trying to use the methods they taught me to
suppress my food craving. And even though it might have
tricked myself into saying, oh, I'm not hungry, I don't
(13:23):
want that cupcake, my brain is telling a different story.
Whereas we're men's brains O, men's brains just went dormant,
which makes just say something about men but um no,
they were able to use their methods to be like,
I don't want that, even though it's my favorite thing. Ever,
so it seems like for women, food cravings or just
something that it's it's just a fact of life. We
(13:44):
just gotta do with one of those things. So instead
of trying to, you know, get rid of our food cravings,
it's all about management. So maybe things like keeping cupcakes
out of the house or avoiding you know, certain restaurants
you know that uh serve gravy, that serve gravy, right,
because things like site, smell, time of day, all of
(14:05):
that can trigger these food cravings that we need to
be aware of. So frankly, I found this podcast pretty
encouraging because it means I can still eat cupcakes. Yeah,
and now all that talk about red velvet cupcakes, I
kind of want one, craving one. Yeah, let's I think,
let's get out of here and go eat cupcakes. So well,
we're out grabbing a cupcake. Why don't you head on
(14:25):
over and read the article on through cravings at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Because it has stuff works dot com
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(14:45):
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