alt Hacker News"You" don't crave stuff, the microbiome in your intestine craves stuff.
There are microbes in there that specialize in eating, say, sugar. You don't give them sugar, they send signals to your brain saying "yo, more sugar"
This is why if you go on a sugar-free diet (just stop eating candy and sweets) the cravings just go away eventually. The microbes who keep shouting for more sugar either die away or go dormant.
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If this was true, sugar cravings would disappear when taking antibiotics that kill those microbes.
The fact that this doesn’t happen should give you pause about this woo-woo theory of cravings.
The reason you crave sugar and fat and other tasty things is that they taste good. You evolved in a world where feeling rewarded and driven to consume more of these was beneficial to survival when food was scarce.
Total crackpot theory.
You’ve heard of The Selfish Gene theory from Richard Dawkins but I’ve started talking about The Sefish Tube. If you think about us another way, we are a tube of GI tract that does everything in its life and with its power to simply be full.
> "You" don't crave stuff
False. We do crave stuff. The microbiome contributes to and influences cravings, but the way you're phrasing it is misleading.