“You know when women are pregnant…”
“Vaguely…” I ought to really as I am, at this point, speaking to my son.
“… and they get cravings…” I make the appropriate affirmative noise. With one of them all I wanted was pork pies and Branston pickle… neither of which you could get in France, with the other it was mushy peas… by the plateful. “And they say it has to do with your body needing stuff.” I wondered where this was going… “Do men get cravings?” I choked quietly down the phone.
“You’re not pregnant.”
This, I have to explain, was not a gratuitous remark. The shade of Jerome K. Jerome wandered through my mind… at least he wasn’t asking about housemaid’s knee. We had been discussing his health and some minor niggles, resulting in the agreement that there was a possibility that he might have a cold.
All joking aside we launched into a serious discussion about cravings in general. My personal opinion is that the body usually knows what it needs in other areas, and probably once knew just what it needed in terms of food too. When we need sleep our bodies tell us. When we need water, we thirst. We are, after all, animals. Perhaps the cravings, both of pregnant women (and the occasional son) are based upon a physiological alarm system that knows what we require … but we have forgotten how to listen; how to use the skill we were given as part of our bodily knowledge.
Dogs will gulp down grass when they need to vomit; pigeons eat grit to help grind the contents of the crop. I observe Ani… some things she loves, but simply will not eat if she is unwell. In fact, if she is unwell she chooses not to eat. The rest of the time she is a gannet and to call her omnivorous would be a gross understatement of her talents in that department.
We wondered whether, back in the early days when food was relatively hard to come by, if man too had been able to identify instinctively what his body needed in terms of nutrients. Perhaps even the herbs for healing. It would make sense to have that ‘inbuilt’. Perhaps we began to lose the habit when food became more plentiful as our first technologies developed? And even more so as our diet became more varied and we had choice.
Nowadays on the whole we have access to an incredible array of foods, both local and from far-flung lands and we do rather take that for granted. It would be very difficult to identify what we really need from all of that and desire, disuse and variety have probably dulled any instinct. Yet we do know, sometimes. We may reach for the chocolate because we feel low… and of course it does have some antidepressant properties. We may reach for it because of its sugar content too when we are flagging… or of course, we may simply have a sweet tooth.
I wonder too how much our food choices have a psychological overlay; where we might have once reached for what would physically do us good, we now reach for the associations of memory, comforting ourselves with childhood foods that take us back to a less stressful time. Or perhaps that too is our body’s voice trying to tell us something.
Either way, the smell of fresh French bread is calling me to the kitchen….
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
i’ve thought about this too,as a child i used to eat rich, black soil, baby ants and freshly cut wood pieces. what does this say about me? needing some nutrients for sure –
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makes you woder, doesn’t it?
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Lately I’ve been craving margaritas. Have the Patron and Grand Marnier. Knockin ’em back in doubles with a little lemon-lime mixer.
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Do you know, I’ve never even tried a margarita…. I feel my education has been lacking somewhat… 😉
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I never had pregnancy cravings but have been conscious in the past of eating in a masochistic sort of way when someone was unkind to me – if I’m unlovable I might as well be fat and unlovable!
Nowadays I think the sugars in processed food have a lot to answer for and are the cause of the obesity epidemic. Too much sugar in one go causes the seesaw effect of rebound hypoglycemia which plays havoc with the metabolism, and long term consumption of junk food causes cravings for more, more, more as the body screams out for nutrients it isn’t getting from a diet of burgers, coco pops, crisps, cakes, biscuits and fizzy drinks.
Sugar is addictive so it’s not surprising the food industry laces everything with it (or the substitutes, most of which are just as dangerous) in the pursuit of profit. That, in addition to the use of chemicals in factory farmed animals and mass produced fruit and vegetables, and the decline in real home cooking in this pressurised world, is resulting in a rapid decline in health with the resultant strain on health services.
Meanwhile, most grossly overweight people (of whom there is an inordinately large number near me in economically depressed Newport) are made to feel guilty for being greedy and lacking in will power when they just don’t understand the mechanism or how to cook properly (and cheaply) to counteract it.
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Sometimes, the cravings happen about foods that are forbidden or not recommended. When I was recovering from gastroenteritis last week, I was craving ice cream and chocolate.
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Cheese and chocolate, every time when I have migraine… and they are both triggers 😉
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I remember the doctor telling me this when my son was a toddler and as far as I could tell, he ran all day on three peas and a half cup of orange juice. And was apparently healthy as a horse. The hardest parenting I ever did was NOT pushing him to eat more!
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Children aren’t as far away from feeling nature perhaps as we are. Mine just ate like horses and remain thin. Most unfair really…:)
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“We are, after all, animals.” – you have never written truer words, Sue – and sometimes civilisation’s veneer can be disturbingly thin, as well as being desperately clung to.
And my cravings? Haha!, probably unprintable, although dry cheeses like Cheshire hit the spot just now, and Duvel beer seems never to lose its allure. Hope you’re fine, Sue. Adrian
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Hi Adrian, just back from indulging in Stowfords at the George and Pilgrim once more, so my animal cravings were addressed 😉
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