Getting to the guts of cravings

n. A food craving (also called moreishness or selective) is an intense desire to consume a specific food, and is different from normal hunger. 

Do you blame your willpower when it comes to holding off the urge to consume certain foods? In practice, there are a number of reasons why we experience cravings - some have physiological origins, others are psychological, emotional, or some come down to habit. But the chances are, you won’t have considered that your gut bacteria may have a role to play.

Yet studies have found that the 100 trillion bacteria that occupy our guts feed off the food we eat - and they can become manipulative in order to survive.

These tiny but powerful microbes can in fact influence our feeling of fullness, change taste receptors in our mouth and make us feel bad until we have eaten that particular food that bacteria needs to survive.

The fewer microflora species in your gut, the more likely you are to be controlled by a particular species’ request for its food source.  So while you might be berating yourself for what can feel like uncontrollable urges to indulge in certain foods, it could be the microbes in your gut that are exerting their willpower over you.

The good news is the greater the number and diversity of microflora species in your gut, the less likely you are to have cravings. The means that broadening the overall variety of foods in your daily diet, particularly plant foods that provide fibres for gut microbes to feed off, may be one tool in your toolbox to help free yourself from pesky food cravings.