Food Cravings: The Facts

What is a Food Craving?:

• It is the intense desire to consume a particular food, can be pretty darn specific too. Examples:
• I need to have Frito Lay's sour cream flavoured potato chips as my tv snack!
• I BLOODY WANT A SALMON WASABI ROLL BECAUSE I'M SO FREAKIN' STRESSED!
• 

Darn it, now I feel like going to a bloody Japanese restaurant!

Facts:

• The more you think about NOT wanting to crave something, 50% of the time you would end up eating more of it.
• Men food crave more savoury foods like barbecued meats, chicken wings and french fries.
• Women generally have more food cravings than men, and the hormones can be blamed. (pregnancy and menstruation).

"No offence, but at this moment in time, a piece of chocolate cake is more appealing"
(It's a girl thing)

How?:

• Food cravings happen as a natural response of us wanting to earn energy for our body.
• Hunger (a basic human NEED) and food cravings (almost always an unecessary WANT), are not the same thing.
  
• Our stomach controls our hunger, and our brain is responsible for food cravings.
  
• Food cravings are evolutionary, we accumulate it even when we were in our mother's wombs, and up til now.
• Generally, we crave high sugar, high fat and high salt foods, which are not necessarily what our body really need too much of. (Basically, nobody craves for boiled asparagus, AND no thousand island dressing. - are you retarded?)
  

The MOST craved foods are:

Alcohol
(The body can crave alcohol to restore pleasurable feelings and avoid negative feelings.)

Pizza
(Cheesy, gooey, and of course fattening-ly good, but who cares!)

Chocolate, Cake and Ice Cream
(I know you want this decadent thingie)

Camel... (Err... No, SOFT DRINKS actually)

We are constantly dictated by cravings by where we live, our culture, our own experiences, and of course, by advertisements and media. Think about it, as mentioned above, some of the most frequently craved foods are always targeted by marketers to appeal to the masses. This is why junk food and fast food advertisements are so easy to fall for, because it is scientifically proven! The purpose of such ads are to ACTIVATE the average person's naturally present food cravings.


So do we fall for such advertising and promotion gimmicks?

Coca-Cola billboard ad. Very smart use of placement though.

Skyy Vodka, an example of indeed sex and alcohol goes together (to the men obviously)

Godiva makes use of the emotional appeal of having its luxurious chocolate.
(And the picture too is NOT helping a woman on diet)

Paris Hilton for Burger King. I wanna be as sexy as her/I so wanna be with this chick,
so I'll but myself a Burger King instead (as close as it gets)!

Baskin Robbins 31 flavours. Hence, 31% discount on the 31st each month!
Brilliant, an excuse to stock up every other month!

Heck, I almost always have all sorts of food cravings and I'm not ashamed to admit so!