Addiction is profitable. Cravings are good for business.
There is no mysterious ingredient. The Cadbury’s Crème Egg secret is out. Chocolate is drug-like in its effect. Artificial taste explodes in the mouth with crunchy, smooth, sweet flavors, supplying intense pleasure. Every texture and nuance of taste is contrived to stimulate your 9,000 taste buds into sending pleasure signals to the brain. The intensified pleasure effect is addictive. We don’t care about the additives or empty calories. Chocolate junkies crave a fix, driven by the desire for that chocolate pleasure. A pleasure for which we will pay any price, even our health.
Chocolate bars are loaded with salt, sugar, caffeine and fat, up to 300 calories per bar. Like a body that demands heroin for its balance, the body will crave sugar, salt and fat. Take candy from a sugar junkie, and look out! Quitting causes withdrawals. Remove sugar, processed fat or salt from your diet, and you will crave them. You will go through the discomfort of facing withdrawal similar to the withdrawal from drugs.
Strawberries and bananas don’t cause cravings. You never feel guilty about eating too many cantaloupes. You never hear little voices in the back of your head saying “eat, eat, eat cantaloupe.” No, because natural foods balance the body and physical cravings are caused by biochemical imbalance. Street drugs, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, salt, saturated fat, refined starch and refined sugars cause cravings because they imbalance the body’s chemistry.
Addictive substances cause the body to become dependent on an unnatural substance for homeostatic balance. Removing it causes withdrawals. During withdrawal, the addict suffers through the painful readjustment as the body cries out for the missing substance. In a desperate attempt to maintain homeostasis (chemical balance), the body demands the very substance that caused the imbalance.
The body’s homeostatic balance is affected by diet. Consumption of massive amounts of sugar, salt, caffeine or fried foods drastically affects homeostatic balance. Natural hunger becomes distorted as the body craves the substances necessary for balance. The body reacts as it would to any addiction. Powerful cravings override the body’s natural needs.
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.