We can experience cravings for many things, not only for food. In medicine, the term “craving” means “an intense, urgent, or abnormal desire or longing (for food, drugs, alcohol, etc.)” [source; emphasis added].
In this article, let us try to understand what food-related cravings are, why they are important, and what questions we should ask. In a separate article, we’ll discuss what strategies can help people reduce their food cravings.
How is food craving different from hunger and “food noise”?
Here are some of the main differences:
1. Food craving is a desire to consume a specific food (typically some combination of sweet, salty, and high-fat foods), while hunger can be satisfied with almost any food. “Food noise” can include many different kinds of thoughts about food and does not necessarily involve a desire to consume food. For more about food noise, please see the following article on this website. Please see the following article on this website: What is “food noise” and how to ask about it
Guess which food is most frequently craved in Western countries? Yes, chocolate (Meule and Hormes, 2015; Richard et al., 2017; Rozin et al., 1991).
2. Food craving can occur even when a person is not hungry at all.
3. Cravings are characteristically felt with intensity and urgency. Because of this, they tend to be harder to resist.
4. Though this is not necessarily the case, people experiencing cravings may find it hard to stop once they start to consume the craved food.
Why are food cravings important?
Some common types of food cravings (for example, carbohydrates like sugar and starches) can be associated with:
1. Weight gain (Boswell and Kober, 2016)
2. Difficulty losing weight and/or less weight loss during dieting (for example, Liu et al., 2020)
3. Guilt or distress after having consumed the food that the person craved