Ruled by our stomachs

 

Humans will do anything to satisfy cravings, including jail terms

CALLING ALL COPS: there is a new, super-easy way to defeat criminals. Simply set up fast food shops near all major banks. Getaway cars will be unable to proceed past them.

This is all to do with a huge change in the way humans operate. For millenniums, people have been divided into two camps: those controlled by their heads and those who follow the dictates of their hearts. But this generation is different. We are controlled by our stomachs.

Here's the evidence. A criminal was recently speeding down a road in the US state of Indiana at 144 kilometers an hour. Police were in hot pursuit in a car chase worthy of Hollywood. Try as they might, cops could not catch up with the villain.

Suddenly the bad guy saw a fast food shop. He may have been a criminal, but deep down he was also a typical modern urban automaton. He did what city-dwellers are trained by years of marketing to do. He skidded to a halt, parked the car and lined up at the counter for a massive hit of calories and cholesterol. Police arrested him and laid down a range of charges, including fleeing from officers, making poor decisions and having lamentably bad taste in food.
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The same day, a reader emailed me a cutting about a petty thief in Taiwan who committed a pointless crime because he had an insatiable craving for cheap jail food. “I cannot forget police department boxed lunches,” he told reporters as he was happily led away. Similar cases have been reported in both south and southeast Asia. The food involved is never haute cuisine, but always cheap nosh.
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This doesn’t just happen to criminals. Your columnist last week was inexorably drawn to a famously ghastly canteen after getting an inexplicable craving for a rice lunch box meal that my dog would have turned her nose up at, and she eats live bugs.
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Most shockingly, a mildly famous animal rights activist of my acquaintance admitted that she had recently dined at McDonald’s. I said: “I thought you would only enter a McDonald’s with the sole purpose of smashing it up as a symbol of imperialist capitalism.”

She replied: “Normally, yes. But I had a craving for chips and ketchup. And chips are vegan, if you think about it.” She told me not to print her name, scared that members of the vegan society would not approve. “They'd eat me alive,” she said, interestingly.
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A doctor friend told me that cravings come when our bodies cry out for specific nutrients (taking that term broadly). The messages are most powerful in pregnant women.

A quick survey of people at the bar that night produced a huge crop of pregnancy craving tales.

One guy knew a woman named Julia who ate a box of tissues.

Another woman ate chalk and talcum powder.

A third ate cheese and ice-cream sandwiches.

A fourth drank salt water.

A fifth put Miracle Whip on her salad.

A sixth ate laundry soap.

A seventh ate gravel.

And most horrible of all, an eighth ate fast food every day for months.

If her child ever grows up to be a robber, he’ll be in trouble if there's burger shop near the bank.

 

Technorati Tags: food,cravings,pregnancy

Comments

[Lisa]

I read an unbelievably stupid article about how too much coca cola is bad for you, especially when pregnant. There were two cases mentioned where the pregnant woman in question reported muscle problems and other dire medical conditions. Said women also drank over 10 litres of cola per day. Huh? How does one manage to consume so much liquid in a day?

[Cookie]

Interesting...i remember when my
mother was sick at the hospital, i threw
tantrums to return home immediately after
arriving at the hospital:i wanted to be the first one to eat fried rice with chicken, (my granny so kindly prepared)before i consume it.apperently
the visitors to the hospital were not
to impressed by my tearful performance.after returning home, i gorged down all the food along with my
granny's wisdom:she told me an old saying
in bangla,"paet thanda to dimag thanda",that translates to"if the stomach is satisfied than the brain is also satisfied".

[sej]

Sorry Nury, I couldn't get past the first few lines. Could you do a podcast for this post, so I can listen to it in the car on the way down to the local McDonalds? Thanks! Got to run now, hungry!

[TS]

Art imitates life, life imitates art:

A robber robbing (as they do) a service station, was told by the attendant that he needed a weapon otherwise he wouldn't be scary.
The robber then managed to grab some money from an open till, he then went straight a McDonald's to buy a burger.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25670242-421,00.html

[sej]

TS, the bit I don't get, is how did he rob the service station, when it seems he was already serving a sentence...

You might also recall the story of the guy who laid siege to a McDonald's restaurant. One rumour/joke I heard was that he chose the McDonalds restaurant so he wouldn't want for food.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2601263.htm

[Uli]

You're quite right in saying that pregnant women have different cravings...
e.g. during my first pregnancy we were quite sure that our child would definitely have an orange-ish / reddish complexion. For several months I only wanted carrot-juice, satsumas and strawberries ;-)))))
This time it I long for yoghurt (only the white one, without taste) and cucumbers. So I guess it was the cucumbers determined that we will have a son now