We’ve all heard the stories about the pregnant woman who only wants ice cream and pickles, who sends her husband out at 1am for fried chicken, who needs, in a deep, primal way, five bars of a very specific brand of chocolate. Perhaps we’ve even experienced an intense craving of this kind ourselves.
It’s often speculated that pregnancy cravings are fulfilling some nutritional need of the woman or the fetus, and there’s something alluring about the idea that they reflect an underlying biological reality. After all, it’s a confusing part of a sometimes difficult process. Gestating a human among one’s viscera is already lengthy, tiring, and uncomfortable, and if there’s a reason for the burning need to eat tacos, so much the better.
However, if you take a look at scientific research on the subject, an intriguing, rather more complex narrative emerges. Pregnancy cravings as a concept are not necessarily experienced in all cultures, researchers have found. And in those non-English-speaking cultures where women do sometimes report cravings, it’s for wildly different things than reported by women in the US and UK, for example. For instance, in Japan, when cravings are reported, the most commonly craved food was rice.
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Going farther, studies to see whether commonly craved foods provide specific nutrients helpful for pregnancy have not found that they are good sources at all. In fact, women who report cravings tend to gain more weight than is generally considered healthy during a pregnancy, which can lead to a higher rate of complications.
That doesn’t mean that women who do have cravings are making it all up, just that these cravings may be driven by something other than biochemical need. Looking at why people crave foods generally can put some of this information into focus, suggests Julia Hormes, a professor of psychology at State University of New York, Albany, who has studied cravings in many different settings. For instance, about 50% of women in the US report craving chocolate in the week before their period, says Hormes. Scientists have explored whether this craving is for some nutrient in chocolate important to menstruation, or whether it reflects shifting hormones.
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July 16, 2020 at 07:32AM
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The surprising reason why pregnant women get cravings - BBC News
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