You can beat food cravings by eating other stuff…?

At least that’s what this article (Self Improvement with Job: Learn more about food cravings) claims… he has some grammar + spelling mistakes, so I somewhat completely rephrase what he says [adding some thoughts of my own in brackets]:

You crave for certain foods [sugars, ...] because your body needs some other stuff. E.g.: B vitamins are essential to metabolise carbohydrates into glucose. [Glucose is the stuff that your brain needs, so btw., if you do a sugar-free diet you're not starving your body but your brain of the stuff it needs!] So, if you crave for sugary stuff, maybe the thing you’re actually lacking are B vitamins to convert the carbohydrates you eat [bread, pasta] into glucose.

[This could mean that if you eat sugery stuff you're just adding more calories to your most likely already sufficient diet, resulting in weight-gain.] The solution then is to eat more nuts, whole-grain cereals, fruits, leafy green vegetables, rice, eggs, … – because they include the chemicals your metabolism needs to work correctly, instead of the things that you crave for. And, if you keep it up, this then should also prevent you from craving them in the future.

he goes on to talk a bit about antidepressants and PMS.

Quite an interesting idea, that the source of your food cravings is not actual need of the nutrients that you crave for, but a need of other chemicals that would allow your body to make them itself. This might be a bit too simplistic and he doesn’t give any sources, but there is definitely something about it.

I would say that for most food cravings at least one of two psychological imbalances is more important than a physical need: Either eating becomes a habit (e.g. if you have food next to your keyboard you are far more likely to eat) or you eat as a substitute for emotional insufficiencies – for example chocolate activates the same receptors as seeing the person you’re in love with, so you are likely to eat if you want to feel good. Also, sugar gives you a short-time “high” on energy (leveraging your blood sugar levels) so we tend to eat sugary foodstuff when we are in a “down” mood. (As a sitenote: Your body reacts by increasing insulin levels in your blood, resulting in a long down after the short sugar high!).

But, to give Job the credit he deserves: His point is absolutely valid, there is evidence that people eating a balanced diet are usually more healthy, more happy and less likely to be overweight than people with an unbalanced diet consisting mostly of carbohydrates [sugars], fats and processed food. Eat a salad with every meal, and maybe an apple instead of a Snickers – and you’ll feel much better!

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