Last month, two-dozen people — including me — puttered around the film set of a promotional short for local author Deborah Madison's and artist Patrick McFarlin's new book, What We Eat When We Eat Alone: Stories and 100 Recipes (Gibbs Smith, hardcover). Each of us took turns occupying a lone chair in the middle of the room and confessing directly into the lens of a video camera what we like to eat in private.

I realized that without the distraction of another person's company — and without the limitations of a restaurant menu or the internal pressure to create a cohesive meal for family or friends — we are free to talk about more genuine things that call to us. And by doing so, we are able to nourish a more primal part of ourselves — or at least a more honest part.

On the film set, some confessions were gritty, some were sexy, and some, I suspected, were embellishments. But it did get me wondering how other people communicate with the angels and demons of their baser instincts — or, in my case, with the relentlessly screeching 800-pound girl inside me, forever straining to be let out.

The closest I've ever come to a nostalgic craving or comfort-food craving is something I now enjoy about twice a year — a toasted sandwich of Camembert and gianduja (a chocolate/hazelnut paste, much like Nutella). It reminds me of the school breakfast I woke up craving almost every morning for 10 years: warm cheese flatbread, its crust charred from the wood-fired oven but still dusty with flour, its center molten with salty akawi — a popular, soft, cow's milk cheese from the Middle East. I'd open the hot sandwich and fold in a Twix bar, wait a few moments until it had begun to melt, and then wolf it down before greasy cheese drippings and melted chocolate had a chance to spatter my tennis shoes. Those were the days.

Cravings can be as varied and unpredictable as the changing of the weather. There are spontaneous cravings; cravings with a gradual onset; PMS cravings; pregnancy cravings; and the notorious "munchies." And then there are pathological cravings, such as those caused by pica — a medical disorder often associated with iron-deficiency anemia, characterized by an appetite for non-foods such clay, coal, soil, chalk and ash. And some cravings can be eerily precise. In her short story Being Food, Marianne Apostolides writes, "Pregnancy eliminated any ambiguity in food preferences. My body's signals became booming, operatic announcements of culinary desire and repulsion ... I knew when I wanted blackberry jam with crunchy peanut butter on multigrain bread; not blueberry jam, but blackberry; not smooth peanut butter, but crunchy; not whole wheat bread, but multigrain — the one with flax seeds, not caraway."

Because I love to read about food, I sometimes develop fantasy cravings — a longing for something I will never taste, such as a dish at a restaurant that has long-since closed. But I also develop vicarious cravings. In Laurie Colwin's essay, Red Peppers, she describes eating an entire bag of bell peppers while walking home after suddenly being struck by an intense hankering. Immediately after reading this, I had to dash out for some bell peppers. Colwin addresses the theory that the craving may have been a subliminal indication that her body was lacking a particular mineral or nutrient, but she quickly undermines the explanation for its bland inadequacy: "My body may have been crying out for vitamins, but my spirit wanted red peppers."

As sensible a theory as that may be, it does nothing to explain cravings for foods that have little or no nutritional value. What inspires my cravings for caramel sundaes? Adam Drewnowski, Ph.D., director of the Human Nutrition Program at the University of Michigan, is skeptical of the hypothetical link between reduced serotonin levels caused by insufficient carbohydrates, which many believe to be the underlying cause of carb cravings. Instead, Drewnowski's studies show that food cravings are controlled by the same physiological mechanisms involved in cravings for opiates, and he found that opiate blockers interfered with the ability to experience pleasure.

Comfort food is rooted in the association of rewards or solace with foods that bring us pleasure during childhood. We continue reaching for the same foods in adulthood as a way of eliciting a Pavlovian response that leaves us feeling better —
in the short term, anyway.

I love listening to people banter wildly about the flavors whose siren songs have them transfixed. To get the monkey off my back, I'll sometimes take the good muffin that's in front of me rather than the awesome one that's down the block. But I listen when my body talks. And most of the time, it takes care of me in return.

Nouf Al-Qasimi is a freelance writer living in Santa Fe. Contact her at food@q.com.