It doesn’t matter what we eat, because we get rid of the urge to fill our stomach when we are hungry. But our souls become obsessed with desire until they eat it, especially if it suffers.
Most of us have experienced this feeling. Desirable food usually contains high calories. This is why this feeling is associated with weight gain or high body mass index. It is common to think that if a person suffers something, the body signals a nutrient it needs. But what is its accuracy?
Research shows that this feeling can have many causes and most of them are psychological. In the early 1900s, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov revealed that dogs were waiting for food in response to certain stimuli about meal time. In his experiments, Pavlov taught the dogs to drool in response to the ringing tone.
Cultural conditioning
According to John Apolzan, an associate professor of food and metabolism at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, the desire for food can be explained mainly by this response.
If you eat popcorn while watching a favorite show on TV, your desire to eat popcorn will increase, o says Apolzan. What triggers the desire to eat is external factors rather than our own.
The fact that chocolate is one of the things that most of our lives suffer in the West can be considered as an indication that there is no lack of food at the source of this desire. Because chocolate is not rich in such a nutrient.
The fact that chocolate is a common object of desire is attributed to its abundance of phenylethylamine. This substance triggers the brain to release dopamine and seretonin chemicals, which are known as happiness hormones. However, this molecule is abundant in foods such as undesirable milk products like chocolate.
When we eat chocolate, an enzyme that breaks down the phenylethylamine does not reach the brain in excess. The desire to eat chocolate among women is twice as much as that of men. Research shows that chocolate is the most desirable food in the West, especially before and after the menstrual period. Blood loss may lead to some mineral deficiencies, such as iron, but scientists say that chocolate does not eliminate iron deficiency as much as red meat or dark green leafy vegetables.
Furthermore, if hormones were effective in the development of the desire to eat chocolate, it would have increased after menopause. But there is a small study that shows that the desire for chocolate decreases after menopause.
The fact that the desire for chocolate is peculiar to Western society shows that cultural reasons may be the source of this. One study shows that a woman born outside the US feels less of a desire to eat chocolate, and that there is a much less chance of a connection between this desire and her period.
The need to find justification
Researchers, women’s association of chocolate with menstrual, “taboo” foods at this time to eat food is more acceptable to connect. In Western culture, the perception of the zayıf weak kadın female body as an ideal and the desire to eat chocolate is justified.
In another study, it is stated that the strong desire for a certain food stems from the conflict between the desire to eat that food and the desire to limit the consumption of that food. Women, in particular, refrain from eating that food, which in turn raises the desire to eat it.
Experts say that this leads to negative emotions, people feel bad if they consume these foods. Negative mood leads to more eating. Research shows that the desire to eat chocolate is unique to the West and is not very common in Eastern cultures.
In addition, words expressing the desire for food exist in only two-thirds of all languages, and most of them are used for drugs rather than food. There is no consensus as to what exactly these words mean. This may cause some different feelings or situations to be described as a desire for food.
How to satisfy the desire for food?
Ads and social media photos are full of signals that trigger the desire for food, so it is not easy to dispel it. Advertising bombardment of unhealthy foods containing plenty of sugar affects the brain and strengthens the desire to eat. Since there is no practical way to reduce such stimuli, researchers try to address this problem through cognitive strategies.
Some research has shown that awareness techniques based on understanding why food desire originates and avoiding judgmental thoughts about it may work. There is research showing that the most effective way to get rid of the desire to eat is to remove these foods from our diet. When we eat less food for a certain period of time, it seems that our desire for it also decreases.
The reason for this may be that when we eat that food less, our memory about it starts to fade in time. However, experts point to the need for further research on this issue. For now, the truth is that the more healthy our diet is, the easier it is to direct the desire for food to healthy food.
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