When Taylor (our 2-year-old) sits down for a meal, he wants meat and fruit. PERIOD.
Bread? Usually ignored.
Vegetables? Very unlikely.
Our older son Milo was exactly the same way at two. Today, at six years old, he'd happily survive on bread, ice cream, and candy if given the opportunity. And yes, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that, as an organic farming dad.
What's fascinating is how their cravings change from week to week.
One week they devour eggs. The next week they don’t want a single bite. One week broccoli is their favorite food. The next week we hear, "Why do you ALWAYS give me broccoli when you KNOW I hate it?"
After years of watching this play out, I've become convinced that humans are born with the remarkable ability to seek out the nutrients their bodies need—at least until modern processed foods start interfering with the signal.
Livestock nutrition researcher, Fred Provenza observed that animals naturally balance their diets when given a diversity of foods (and in the absence of unnaturally sweet feed additives, like molasses).
Human agriculture began about 12,000 years ago. The previous 2 million years (99%) of human existence (counting homo erectus), our ancestors were hunter/gatherers, primarily consuming meat and fruit.
So it doesn’t surprise me that humans are still born today with these instinctual preferences.
In fact, Dr. Paul Saladino, tested numerous foods and found that nearly all foods, except meat and fruit, are full of “anti-nutrients.”
These are various natural compounds that discourage animals from eating them. This, of course, is for the plant’s evolutionary advantage – to not be consumed before they can reproduce.
Fruit is an anomaly in the plant world. By definition, a fruit contains the seeds of the plant. So evolutionarily, fruit survives and spreads by being consumed, because the seed then gets carried to a new location, and “planted” within a bed of “fertilizer” to grow and propagate again.
What if your sweet tooth is actually your body’s way of saying, “I need complex carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants,” but your rewired brain has forgotten that fruit is actually the solution that will fulfill your nutritional deficit, not the lollipop on the bank counter?
What if your craving for a hamburger is totally real, but your body wasn't asking for 40 additional grams of carbs from the bun and sugary ketchup?
If you find yourself with regular cravings for the same “foods” at the same time of day, maybe it’s your body telling you something. And the engineered, processed “food” closest to you, is probably not the signal your primal intuition was trying to send.
Just as I believe we are born with the ability to balance our own nutrition, I also believe that we can get it back, if we listen carefully to our bodies and cut way back on foods that couldn’t be hunted or gathered by our ancient ancestors.