One strange craving

Residents dish about their guilty pleasures

You want it.

It’s OK to admit it; we ALL want it.

Our guilty pleasures, that is.

Meaning the foods we secretly (or not so secretly) crave, the treats we should have outgrown in childhood, the oddball combinations, the even downright weird creations.

We’re talking about the foods that trigger our taste buds, whether they’re good for us or not (usually not), whether they even make any kind of culinary sense at all — except to us.

Like Evan Palm’s guilty pleasure, a dish he thought up himself, an invention known to his friends as, simply, “the sandwich.”

“It’s a (sliced) toasted, whole-wheat bagel, smeared on one side with cream cheese and on the other side with peanut butter,” says Palm, 21, a Kansas University junior from Roseville, Minn. “Then I put on some sliced bananas, about two strips of bacon — broken into pieces — cinnamon or cinnamon sugar and a light drizzle of honey.”

He’s not embarrassed about his guilty pleasure. In fact, he’s rather proud of what he’s created.

“It’s absolutely spectacular. The flavors really balance out quite well. I’ve been considering making a breakfast version of it that would involve egg, but I haven’t really gotten to that yet,” Palm says.

Thank goodness.

While Palm’s yearning for a sandwich that sounds like it came out of Elvis Presley’s kitchen might seem bizarro, it’s really just part of being human.

We’re hard wired to seek out a wide variety of tastes, some of which we develop a particularly strong craving for — even if that craving might seem weird to everyone else.

“We’re naturally omnivorous. The range of food that we can eat — and with pleasure — is truly amazing,” says Chris Crandall, a social psychologist at KU who’s done research into food, eating and taste preferences.

For Lisa Bakke, guilty pleasure means one thing: chocolate.

“Probably the worst thing I eat would be the Totino’s Pizza Rolls, with ranch or bleu cheese salad dressing. That’s probably my weird food thing.”— Travis Castle, 25, pharmacy student at Kansas University“I love graham crackers with peanut butter on them. My dad used to make them if we didn’t have cookies in the house.”— Kourtnee Voegele, 19, Kansas University freshman, Minnetonka, Minn.“If I eat a bowl of cereal, I’ll eat it dry, but I’ll drink a glass of milk with it. I’ve done Grape-Nuts without milk. People don’t know how I do that.”— Megan Heyer, 18, Kansas University freshman, St. Louis“Hot out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies, from my mother’s recipe. I try not to make that stuff any more. It’s easiest if they’re not in the house.”— Terry Rutherford, 45, a 1982 Kansas University graduate, Leawood“A toasted whole-wheat bagel with cream cheese, peanut butter, sliced bananas, bacon, cinnamon and a drizzle of honey.”— Evan Palm, 21, Kansas University junior, Roseville, Minn.“Menudo. Most people wince when you say it, because it’s pig intestines, but it’s really good!”— Ian Sotomayor, 29, bartender, Free State Brewing Co., 636 Mass.“Salted in-the-shell peanuts. I’m not allowed to eat them anymore, because if I eat one, I’ll eat 50.”— Doug Weaver, 46, Lawrence resident“Snickers. It just tastes so wonderful. I only have the little (bite-size) ones; I don’t eat the whole big bar.”— Kitsy Gray, 57, Lawrence resident“It would be the Double Sex Bomb (at The Java Break, 17 E. Seventh St.). It’s a vanilla latte — hot or iced, depending on the weather — with two kinds of chocolate and two shots of espresso. Definitely — three times a week.”— Christine Wolgast, 20, hair stylist, Lawrence resident“The ice cream at Sylas & Maddy’s (1014 Mass.) — especially Peanut Butter Freak, or Chocolate Covered Strawberry. I’ve got a sweet tooth, and it’s just really good ice cream.”— Andrew Stowers, 29, barista, Lawrence resident

“I love dark chocolate. I like Valrhona (brand), very dark and not overly sweet. Scharffen Berger chocolate is good, too, and great to cook with. Its flavor is complex, and it’s rich,” says Bakke, 40.

Sometimes Bakke will combine her guilty pleasure with her other great love: good, crusty bread from Wheatfields Bakery, 904 Vt.

“You can take chunks of dark chocolate (and bread) and essentially make a grilled cheese sandwich, but with chocolate instead. It’s a chocolate panini,” says Bakke, a Lawrence resident.

Bakke’s longing for chocolate — or a gooey bread-and-chocolate combo — makes perfect sense to Crandall.

It turns out that when most of us are in the grips of a food craving, what our bodies are really seeking is calories — in whatever form.

“Fat and sweet together is what people like the most. That’s why people like ice cream or chocolate: They’re both fat AND sweet. And the reason is that fat and sweet have high caloric density,” says Crandall, who has taught in KU’s psychology department for 13 years.

“People learn to like particular foods because they are associated with good stuff — usually high-caloric density. You know when you bite into something if it’s rich or not. You can fool people with fake fats and fake sugars, although not very well and not for very long.”

There’s another taste that drives the cravings that many people have.

“The missing ingredient we haven’t talked about is sodium. Some people deny themselves sodium and just can’t wait (to consume it). Sodium makes things taste good, and if you’re low on salt, man, sodium tastes pretty good,” Crandall says.

Lawrence resident Doug Weaver understands that kind of craving.

His guilty pleasure?

“Salted, in-the-shell peanuts. I’m not allowed to eat them anymore, because if I eat one, I’ll eat 50,” says Weaver, 46.

“I grew up watching baseball games, and that’s what I had — a hot dog and a bag of peanuts.”

Good associations

As far as Ian Sotomayor is concerned, you can keep your sweet or salty treats.

He craves something else entirely.

“Menudo. It’s a soup made of tripe, hominy, oregano, lemon and hot sauce. That’s a guilty pleasure that I eat whenever I go home to Hutchinson, about every two months,” says Sotomayor, a bartender at Free State Brewing Co., 636 Mass.

“Most people wince when you say it because it’s pig intestines, but it’s really good. You usually eat it with flour tortillas.”

Sotomayor’s craving for his grandma’s menudo fits in with Crandall’s understanding of the kind of foods people desire.

“What we like are things that we often deny ourselves but want. People who watch their weight by reducing calories, their guilty pleasures are going to be calorically dense. It’s often a taste that you don’t have much of (in your diet),” he says.

“Now, menudo is not particularly calorically dense, but it’s distinctive and strongly flavored, and so it may be a combination that the guy (Sotomayor) doesn’t get much.”

Often, cravings are driven by the associations that people have with certain foods. In other words, eating a particular dish brings up positive thoughts and sensations.

“What’s going on is not biological, but psychological. Menudo has the same (physiological) effect on anybody who eats it,” Crandall says.

So some people — like Sotomayor, 29 — love it, while others run from it.

“I don’t belly up to the bar for menudo myself, because I know what tripe looks like,” Crandall says. “I know what it is, and it gives me the willies.”