Why Do I Crave Cereal?
Most cereals are high in sugar and carbohydrates and may also be high in fat. Sugar, carbs and fats are the most commonly craved types of food. A craving for cereal can have several causes, ranging from chronic stress to hormonal fluctuations.
What you eat regularly will also be closer to what your body will tend to crave. When a patient tells me that they never crave vegetables but they often crave sugar and salt, this person often doesn’t want them because their body, to some degree, has forgotten that they need them. You can’t really crave something that you eat rarely.
Though a craving for dairy sweets like ice cream probably just means you’re craving sugar, and a craving for cheese or milk may just have to do with the responses we have to high-calorie food noted
Cravings for non-food items such as ice, clay, dirt and chalk can often mean an iron deficiency or mineral deficiency in general. Consume plenty of dark green leafy vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds for the prevention of pica. This is more frequently seen in children and during periods of greater nutritional need such as pregnancy.
What does craving cereal mean?
Craving cereal does not necessarily mean that you are deprived of carbohydrates. Image Credit: Jupiterimages/Pixland/Getty Images. Craving cereal does not necessarily mean that you are deprived of carbohydrates.
Women often crave high-fat and high-sugar foods in the premenstrual phase of their cycles because of hormonal fluctuations, according to the University of Illinois McKinley Health Center.
In fact, women are often less able than men to resist cravings because of their estrogen levels, according to Brookhaven National Laboratory. A high-sugar, high-carb cereal might be just the thing for a woman who’s dealing with fluctuating hormones. Advertisement.
Eating the craved high-energy food, such as chocolate or cereal, may resolve the chronic stress response temporarily, but unless the factors causing the stress are removed, continually consuming these foods can lead to obesity and more stress. Advertisement.
Image Credit: Christopher Robbins/Digital Vision/Getty Images. A craving for cereal may be an indication of chronic stress.
Why do we crave food?
We typically crave foods because they stimulate the release of certain brain chemicals that change or balance our moods when we’re feeling sad, stressed, or tired.
What You’re Craving: Cookies, chocolate, cake. What You’re Actually Craving: Happiness, energy. Sugar can cause our brains to release serotonin — a chemical which makes us feel relaxed and plays a role in regulating mood.
According to Shape, when we’re tired, we sometimes crave simple carbs like sugar because they are “digested quicker than complex ones such as whole grains and beans, so the energy kicks in sooner.”.
The sugar in chocolate may be helping us cop e with the depression that many of us experience in the run-up to our periods, though the association between chocolate and PMS is also likely the result of cultural conditioning.) Additionally, most of us psychologically associate eating sweets with feeling better.