"crave" news and stories

The folks at Lenny's, er, Denny's, surveyed hundreds of late-night eaters a few months ago. Some of their findings are available at Restaurant News Resource. The survey defined late-night eaters as folks dining out between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. on a weekly or monthly basis.

For the most part, the trends in responses aren't anything too earth-shaking: most of the people surveyed were out for typical American food like burgers and fries. I was a little surprised that only 6 percent said they were out late at night for dessert, however. I'm not totally clear on just who Denny's surveyed, but aside from the Slams and skillets, some folks said they wanted things like fried tofu and goat's milk. To those of you in front of the refrigerator drinking goat's milk from the carton at 3 a.m., you are not alone.

When it comes to chocolate, there are two types of people: cravers and noncravers. It is interesting to note this because, unlike the vast majority of foodstuffs, people feel very strongly about their love of chocolate and often seem to find it to be "incredible" that not everyone loves the stuff.

Those who crave it experience an unusual reaction just from looking at it. A new study shows that simply looking at chocolate can activate the pleasure centers in a brain of a chocolate-lover. In fact, the part of the brain that is involved in drug addiction, the ventral striatum, turned on in response to the images, though noncravers did not have any activity in this part of the brain. Not surprisingly, when the viewing was combined with a taste of chocolate, their reaction (within the pleasure centers of the brain) was very strong. Noncravers also did not report that tasting the chocolate was as pleasant as the cravers did.

No on yet seems to have any idea as to why some crave chocolate and others don't, but some scientists say that the results of this study, indicating a clear desire-reward reaction to chocolate, could help "people change their diets or control cravings" for chocolate and possibly other foods. But when it comes to chocolate, who would want to?

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