I’m sure many people in college have experienced the same phenomenon; you’re sitting in your dorm when suddenly you have an overpowering desire to eat your mom’s super cheesy mac and cheese or get canyon pizza. More often then not these cravings occur at what we think are random and usually inconvenient times. They are very specific and powerful and recently I began to wonder what exactly causes them. The reason is surprising, it has nothing to do with a nutritional defect or plain hunger, and instead our cravings are triggered by our evolutional need to feel safe. Prehistorically when our early ancestors lived they had to survive off of diets consisting of very high calorie contents. This was because food wasn’t as readily available as it is now, so they literally lived day to day in most clans. But it’s 2014 and there is a McDonalds on every block so why do we still crave fatty high calorie foods?

They reason can be attributed to survival yet again, but in a kind of backwards sense. According to an article by the Huffington Post, “it doesn’t take an impending famine to trigger these cues. Take the current dip in the stock market, or potential layoffs at the office. An unconscious (and sometimes conscious) fear of financial struggles could be enough to spark the survival instinct to chow down on high-calorie foods.” The article is saying that whenever we realize that our fortunes may be in jeopardy in some way it is the natural instinct of us as humans to chow down on as much high calorie food as possible. Often time’s college students find themselves in financial stress. But the cravings are caused by more then just finances, anything that could potentially disrupt our happiness and life plans, a bad grade, breaking up with your girlfriend, etc., has the ability to make us go into survival mode and crave some French fries. We see sadness as a threat to our health and future. This is like how our ancestors had to gorge themselves because there was a chance their food source would run dry and wreck havoc on their futures as well.

An interesting report I found relating to this subject by Duke Medicine discovered that mice, which lack the taste buds to discern sweetness, prefer higher calorie sugar then low calorie sugar when both are given as an option. This goes along with how human bodies prefer high calorie foods to lower ones; overall it’s a survival instinct. The body is able to discern which option will be it the most potential energy for future use. After it does this it conditions the brain to desire more whenever its host is threatened. So remember next time you suddenly want a whole bag of pretzels. While it may be in your nature to gorge yourself after a breakup it will only make you happy for a little while and then you’ll be sad and greasy and still broken up.

http://corporate.dukemedicine.org/news_and_publications/news_office/news/10267

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/fat-cravings_n_960463.html