6 ms·

Is this article based on any solid research? It appears a number of speculative theories concocted by scientists are presented, but with little evidence to sup

by cwkoss 7y ago

Is this article based on any solid research? It appears a number of speculative theories concocted by scientists are presented, but with little evidence to support them. Seems a more accurate headline would be "Several scientists discuss different plausible mechanisms for causing food cravings" This article reeks of scientific illiteracy. The "Myth of Food Cravings" is in no way invalidated because "if you eat popcorn every time you watch TV, you might crave popcorn when you watch TV"

devoply 7y ago
What if it were the case that if you believed this to be true then it became true, and vice versa? Don't believe me? People can kill themselves by believing that they are going to die... if that's possible, then why does believing one myth or another change our behavior seem so far fetched? And if that's the case, then how can science possibly tell us anything other than validate that the subject is holding a myth which causes certain behaviors? That being said the article basically says stop eating stuff you crave altogether and fugetaboutit... as an effective way to stop craving it. The more you eat something the more you want of it -- and thinking about my food addictions like soda that seems to be true. The cite a study that confirms this theory.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > The more you eat something the more you want of it -- and thinking about my food addictions like soda that seems to be true. In general, the opposite is the case. For most foods, people will get tired of them after a certain amount of exposure. Bread and milk (for the lactose-tolerant) are exceptions.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
I agree that the article doesn't seem to be on a very firm foundation. But it's reasonable enough that I also don't really hold that against it. Good points: > “If you always eat popcorn when you watch your favourite TV show, your cravings will for popcorn will increase when you watch it,” he says. I'm pretty sure this is true. Habit will go a long way. > Even in languages that do contain a word for craving, there is still is a lack of consensus around what a craving actually is. This, Konova argues, is a barrier to understanding how to overcome cravings, since we may be labelling several different processes as cravings. I'm pretty sure this ["we may be labelling several different processes as cravings"] is true too. They give more attention to "chocolate cravings" than I think that phenomenon really warrants, but here are a couple of points I thought were well made: > Chocolate is one of the most common food cravings in the West – which supports the argument that cravings don’t stem from nutritional deficiencies, since chocolate doesn’t really contain high levels of anything we could be deficient in. > [Female "craving" for chocolate], [uncredited researchers] say, is because Western culture has a “thin ideal” of female beauty that creates the perception that craving chocolate must be justified with a good excuse. I would tend to lean toward the theory that people are expressing a "craving" for chocolate mostly because it contains a lot of sugar, and those people would find unsweetened chocolate unsatisfying. And I find it plausible that a lot of people feel they need a special excuse, like an especially strong word, to indulge themselves. On the other hand, I am certain that food cravings based on nutritional issues do exist. You can read the story of the guy they consulted for Life of Pi who was lost at sea, and how he started to crave raw fish eyes. When you're starving, the eyes taste fantastic, and you daydream about them -- and not coincidentally, they are a rich source of certain nutrients that aren't so easy to get by eating the rest of the fish. I am a very picky eater, and when I first went to China I had a hard time getting food. When I visited home, several months later, my dad met me at the airport and the first thing he said was "you look like a skeleton -- where do you want to eat?" And I had an answer ready immediately, because I'd spent a lot of time those past months thinking about pizza. But modern life generally satisfies everyone's basic nutritional needs, so again it seems plausible that the majority of food cravings that actually occur (however we end up defining cravings) are based on something else.
- contingencies 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism
- Nition 7y ago
  > I would tend to lean toward the theory that people are expressing a "craving" for chocolate mostly because it contains a lot of sugar Chocolate also contains caffeine.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    it's also the only category of candy I can think of off the top of my head that contains fat.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Good points. I don't debate the plausibility of the mechanisms they discussed, but rather find the lack of coherency between the initial premise and the 'supporting arguments' confusing. It reads like they took the 'myth' that "Some cravings are based on nutritional need" spun it into the strawman "All craving are based 100% on nutritional need" and then spend the rest of the article smugly congratulating themselves for tearing down their strawman. Because nobody actually advocates for the strawman, the meandering content of the article comes across as bizarre.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >It reads like they took the 'myth' that "Some cravings are based on nutritional need" spun it into the strawman "All craving are based 100% on nutritional need" and then spend the rest of the article smugly congratulating themselves for tearing down their strawman. It's not really a strawman if people really believe this (and justify all/most of their cravings as nutritional needs). For those people, it makes sense to tear this idea down.
Causality1 7y ago
It also doesn't address people with actual nutrient deficiencies. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey were a British couple who survived for 117 days in a life raft. They reported craving and consuming fish eyes. It wasn't until after they were rescued they were informed fish eyes contain vitamin C, which they had no other source of.
- paulcole 7y ago
  Had they eaten fish eyes before being stranded? If not how would they know they were craving fish eyes?
  - travisjungroth 7y ago
    I’m guessing they ate them first and then craved more.
  - mrfusion 7y ago
    Could be instinctual knowledge too. How does a new born know a nipple has milk.
    - jpfed 7y ago
      They don't have to know, at least at first. There's a (super cute) built-in reflex that causes them to move their mouth towards whatever brushes their cheek.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    They were catching fish to eat and found that the eyes looked and smelled attractive.
    - adrianratnapala 7y ago
      Smell is an interesting point As travisjungroth points out, the most obvious mechanism is feed-back where they eat something, it works, and the body is designed to do more of the same. But if there is a feed-forward mechanism, i.e. where genetic information tells you "eat this thing now, even if you normally hate it*; then the most plausible thing would a pretty low level mechanism that matches chemicals detected by smell.

by cwkoss 7y ago

devoply 7y ago

What if it were the case that if you believed this to be true then it became true, and vice versa? Don't believe me? People can kill themselves by believing that they are going to die... if that's possible, then why does believing one myth or another change our behavior seem so far fetched? And if that's the case, then how can science possibly tell us anything other than validate that the subject is holding a myth which causes certain behaviors? That being said the article basically says stop eating stuff you crave altogether and fugetaboutit... as an effective way to stop craving it. The more you eat something the more you want of it -- and thinking about my food addictions like soda that seems to be true. The cite a study that confirms this theory.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> The more you eat something the more you want of it -- and thinking about my food addictions like soda that seems to be true. In general, the opposite is the case. For most foods, people will get tired of them after a certain amount of exposure. Bread and milk (for the lactose-tolerant) are exceptions.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

I agree that the article doesn't seem to be on a very firm foundation. But it's reasonable enough that I also don't really hold that against it. Good points: > “If you always eat popcorn when you watch your favourite TV show, your cravings will for popcorn will increase when you watch it,” he says. I'm pretty sure this is true. Habit will go a long way. > Even in languages that do contain a word for craving, there is still is a lack of consensus around what a craving actually is. This, Konova argues, is a barrier to understanding how to overcome cravings, since we may be labelling several different processes as cravings. I'm pretty sure this ["we may be labelling several different processes as cravings"] is true too. They give more attention to "chocolate cravings" than I think that phenomenon really warrants, but here are a couple of points I thought were well made: > Chocolate is one of the most common food cravings in the West – which supports the argument that cravings don’t stem from nutritional deficiencies, since chocolate doesn’t really contain high levels of anything we could be deficient in. > [Female "craving" for chocolate], [uncredited researchers] say, is because Western culture has a “thin ideal” of female beauty that creates the perception that craving chocolate must be justified with a good excuse. I would tend to lean toward the theory that people are expressing a "craving" for chocolate mostly because it contains a lot of sugar, and those people would find unsweetened chocolate unsatisfying. And I find it plausible that a lot of people feel they need a special excuse, like an especially strong word, to indulge themselves. On the other hand, I am certain that food cravings based on nutritional issues do exist. You can read the story of the guy they consulted for Life of Pi who was lost at sea, and how he started to crave raw fish eyes. When you're starving, the eyes taste fantastic, and you daydream about them -- and not coincidentally, they are a rich source of certain nutrients that aren't so easy to get by eating the rest of the fish. I am a very picky eater, and when I first went to China I had a hard time getting food. When I visited home, several months later, my dad met me at the airport and the first thing he said was "you look like a skeleton -- where do you want to eat?" And I had an answer ready immediately, because I'd spent a lot of time those past months thinking about pizza. But modern life generally satisfies everyone's basic nutritional needs, so again it seems plausible that the majority of food cravings that actually occur (however we end up defining cravings) are based on something else.

contingencies 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism
Nition 7y ago
> I would tend to lean toward the theory that people are expressing a "craving" for chocolate mostly because it contains a lot of sugar Chocolate also contains caffeine.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  it's also the only category of candy I can think of off the top of my head that contains fat.
cwkoss 7y ago
Good points. I don't debate the plausibility of the mechanisms they discussed, but rather find the lack of coherency between the initial premise and the 'supporting arguments' confusing. It reads like they took the 'myth' that "Some cravings are based on nutritional need" spun it into the strawman "All craving are based 100% on nutritional need" and then spend the rest of the article smugly congratulating themselves for tearing down their strawman. Because nobody actually advocates for the strawman, the meandering content of the article comes across as bizarre.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >It reads like they took the 'myth' that "Some cravings are based on nutritional need" spun it into the strawman "All craving are based 100% on nutritional need" and then spend the rest of the article smugly congratulating themselves for tearing down their strawman. It's not really a strawman if people really believe this (and justify all/most of their cravings as nutritional needs). For those people, it makes sense to tear this idea down.

Causality1 7y ago

It also doesn't address people with actual nutrient deficiencies. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey were a British couple who survived for 117 days in a life raft. They reported craving and consuming fish eyes. It wasn't until after they were rescued they were informed fish eyes contain vitamin C, which they had no other source of.

paulcole 7y ago
Had they eaten fish eyes before being stranded? If not how would they know they were craving fish eyes?
- travisjungroth 7y ago
  I’m guessing they ate them first and then craved more.
- mrfusion 7y ago
  Could be instinctual knowledge too. How does a new born know a nipple has milk.
  - jpfed 7y ago
    They don't have to know, at least at first. There's a (super cute) built-in reflex that causes them to move their mouth towards whatever brushes their cheek.
- Causality1 7y ago
  They were catching fish to eat and found that the eyes looked and smelled attractive.
  - adrianratnapala 7y ago
    Smell is an interesting point As travisjungroth points out, the most obvious mechanism is feed-back where they eat something, it works, and the body is designed to do more of the same. But if there is a feed-forward mechanism, i.e. where genetic information tells you "eat this thing now, even if you normally hate it*; then the most plausible thing would a pretty low level mechanism that matches chemicals detected by smell.