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Standard Advice about nutrition puts a lot of emphasis on fruits and vegetables. Now, "vegetable" is a pretty terribly overbroad category, and "fruit or vegetable" is even more so, but put that aside for a moment. In observational studies, eating more fruits and vegetables correlates with good health outcomes. This is usually explained in terms of micronutrients. But I think there's a simpler explanation.
People instinctively seek nutrients--water, calories, protein, and other things--in something that approximates a priority ordering. You can think of it as a hierarchy of needs; it wouldn't make sense to eat lettuce while you're starved for protein, or beans while you're dehydrated, and people's cravings reflect that.
I have started calling this Maslow's Hierarchy of Foods.
Vegetables do not rank highly in this priority ordering, so eating salads is pretty good evidence that all of someone's higher-priority nutritional needs are met. I believe this explains most of the claimed health benefits from eating vegetables, as seen in observational studies.
Conversely, sugar is the fastest way to get calories (all other calorie sources have a longer digestion-delay), so craving sugar is evidence that someone has *not* satisfied their high-priority nutritional needs. Someone who eats a lot of candy bars is likely to be undereating in general, and not getting enough protein/fat/salt/micronutrients. I believe this explains most of the claimed health harms from eating sugar, as seen in observational studies.
A lot of people seem to think of cravings as a negative force, shifting people away from whatever optimal diet they would have chosen and towards superstimulus junk food. I think that's a huge mistake, and that understanding how to eat well, and figuring out what's going wrong in the modern food environment, requires making use of the information our food-related instincts provide.
someone found this: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nutrient-deficiencies-cravings https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190524-food-cravings-are-they-a-sign-of-nutritional-deficit
From the first article:
Weight loss studies provide additional arguments against the “nutrient deficiency” theory.
In one weight loss study, participants following a low-carb diet for two years reported much lower cravings for carb-rich foods than those following a low-fat diet.
Similarly, participants put on low-fat diets during the same period reported fewer cravings f... (read more)
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