The scientific explanation behind your food cravings

Thousands of years of evolution taught us one thing: When we see food, we should eat it.

This is because our ancestors didn’t have access to sufficient food all the time, so opportunistic over-eating was advantageous.

Modern technology has taken away the feast-or-famine problem, but our evolutionary senses haven’t caught up.

And all that easily accessible, delicious, high-fat, high-sugar foods trigger our brain’s internal reward systems, which control our feeling of “needing” and “enjoying” food.

And those systems can override the chemical pathways that trigger actual feelings of hunger, making us want to eat despite physically feeling satiated.

Unfortunately, the evolutionary need to consume as many calories as possible, which is out of sync with the constant availability of food, means that sometimes we overeat.

To fight overeating, experts suggest tweaking behaviors slightly, like going for a walk instead of indulging, or avoiding the candy aisle altogether when grocery shopping.

Most importantly, experts agree that dieting doesn’t work. In fact, restrictive diets that take extreme discipline and constant maintenance often lead to worse food cravings and can affect mental health.

Remember: Fighting food cravings is, in a sense, fighting evolution. We’re not powerless against it, but it’s important to have realistic goals when it comes to our diets.