My appetite has a certain instinct for what it wants to eat, and its focus tends to be one particular ingredient or property (of any sort). However, it expresses itself in a most bizarre suggestion: by recommending particular food items that I can eat that would contain the ingredient, without telling me explicitly what that ingredient or property of the food is. Sometimes, it’s really trivial – chocolate ice cream bar, Twix bar, and Godiva — I obviously want chocolate (this happens periodically, maybe once every month or so). It can sometimes be more subtle: corn flakes, beef jerky, and a wrap from the Olive Tree Cafe food truck. The common denominator of those three is the requirement of higher-than-average chewing. Oftentimes, the cravings actually address needs of my body – cravings for bell peppers may indicate a vitamin deficiency, and one for pineapple may indicate the need of the enzymes to settle something in my stomach.
Today, my stomach told me: “buffalo chicken fingers and pickles.” I was like, hmm, maybe what I want is vinegar (by the way, I ate both). I double-checked by thinking about hot & sour soup and guo tie in soy sauce-vinegar sauce, and indeed, I got approval from my appetite with those as well. It also so happens that I have been rather dizzy and light-headed all day, and after eating the buffalo chicken fingers and pickles, I gradually but surely began to feel less spinny-headed.
Suspecting that perhaps dizziness and vinegar are linked, somehow (I’ve never thought of that before – I usually eat ginger or drink ice water for dizziness), I searched the web. I came across many remedies citing apple cider vinegar (which isn’t really what’s in buffalo wings or pickle, which, as far as I know, use plain white vinegar). There may really be some wisdom behind these cravings … I take great care to always listen to my stomach – I tend to have far more satisfying meals when I do.
Skeptics can choose to believe, instead, that I became less dizzy because the dizziness was caused by hunger in the first place, and eating anything would have reduced the dizziness. Some evidence to the contrary, however, is that I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, and in the absence of having buffalo chicken fingers, I would have preferred to just eat nothing at all.
By the way, have you ever heard of “Mother of Vinegar”?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_vinegar. What a bizarre thing o_O
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