The human body is designed to survive. Our bodies are extremely smart, much smarter than us, and direct our minds to eat various foods, depending on the nutrients it needs or deficiencies that need to be met. So if your body is low in magnesium, then you may start craving some kidney beans (rajma) or almonds. However, if you only feed your body junk food, it's only known source of magnesium will be chocolate, and you will feel an uncontrollable urge to eat some chocolate. While your body does get some magnesium from chocolate, it also gets refined sugar, hydrogenated fat and other additives that are largely unhealthy for the body.
The main problem is that our bodies have consumed real food for millions of years, but have just recently been introduced processed foods, merely about fifty years back. So our body's natural craving system has been jeopardized by all the new processed foods that it really doesn't recognize. Such packaged and processed food items confuse our body's natural craving system, causing us to overeat. When our bodies consume refined sugars, refined fats, artificial flavorings, chemical additives, etc, it really doesn't know how to process these foods. It creates too much confusion in our perfectly functioning physiological system.
A classic example can be breakfast cereal. And I'm not even talking about the highly sugared breakfast cereals that are equivalent to putting candies in your milk. I'm talking about the regular, so called healthy, good-for-diabetics breakfast cereals. Now, if you eat a bowl of cereal every single day, your body will get used to receiving synthetic vitamins from the cereal on a regular basis. And when your body is in need of more nutrients, what do you crave? More breakfast cereal. That is what the body best recognizes as a source of nutrients. It can be even more frightening if your body's source of fats is only from potato chips filled with trans fats, or if your body's only source of protein is from packaged noodles, or your body's best source of energy is from dudh-bari.
The perfectly formulated craving system that our bodies are innately capable of is further disrupted when processed and packaged food items are produced with the definitive intention of making us addicted. Many have added sugar, some have caffeine, there are those that have actual addictive additives, and then there's the concept of formulating food to have the perfect 'bliss point'.
According to Karin Allen, PhD, a professor of food science in Utah State University, "Bliss point is where we find the right balance of the three main components our bodies crave."
That means processed foods are made with the perfect combination of sugar, salt and fat to stimulate our brain into wanting more and more. Processed foods are designed with the intention of being highly addictive, so that we literally cannot eat just one.
Food cravings can be strong enough to pick you up and put you in front of your fridge. For women, cravings are especially intense a few days or even a week prior to menstruation. All that a woman's body needs during that time is some zinc, from organ meats, leafy greens, or root vegetables; some healthy fats, add on that ghee; for magnesium, just go to nuts; and an extra three hundred calories one day prior to your cycle starting, simply because it's a lot of extra work for your body, and it needs the extra energy.
So, you see, our bodies know what it needs, and it recognizes simple, unadulterated, real foods. There's a reason why you don't salivate over a box of card box like you do when you see some freshly made alooko achaar with some fresh coriander leaves over it. Let your body feed on real food, and watch it thrive and give you all the energy you need to push through the ups and downs of life. A.J. Langer once said, "You have to trust your body to take care of you." Truer words have never been spoken.
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