Craving Mustard?

The other day I came home from my daily speed walk with my nordic sticks (I practice what I teach) and although I was more thirsty than hungry I suddenly had a wild hankering for mustard. Not a sandwich with mustard, not a hotdog or anything at all with it, just mustard. “Okay” I said to myself, “this will pass” but nope, mustard mustard mustard….gotta have mustard!!! Thankfully there are several types in my fridge, in fact one section of the door is dedicated to just mustard even though I rarely use it for myself, it’s more for things my husband likes to eat. A few oops I mean several almond crackers later with a smash of every mustard I had on each one, I was satisfied but the question of WHY did I absolutely just have to have that? What if anything does mustard have to do with nutritional deficiencies, if that’s even why I would crave it like that? Does this happen to you?

Surprising its not that uncommon, in fact it’s a popular craving mainly because of it’s variety of flavors, tastes, odors and sensations that it provides, new stimulations of the taste buds but this isn’t the main reason we crave it. Having said that a hotdog was pointless if there was no mustard, potato salad was boring, beans needed it and and and, and even though right about now some of you are gagging at my tastes, many of you will relate and so like many things, we’ll agree that mustard is marvelous IF you like it.

So DOES it mean anything if you’re all but wanting to drink the stuff? YES! It could mean that you’re deficient in:

Calcium

Thiamine

Manganese

Selenium

and/or Potassium.

It could be one or any combination of these things and all of them are important, but I wouldn’t rush out to buy a bottle of each to start trying to correct the imbalance as that’s going to be expensive and tediously annoying so start with a natural combo product that has most of these things, that way it’s just 1 supplement to add instead of several. My preference is this as it contains critical nutrients including three of the best sources of calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, copper, and manganese. I’m not going to break each one of those down here as to why they’re important as most of us understand the importance of calcium and magnesium but did you know that manganese is crucial for energy production as well as maintaining bone strength?

Our bodies are so amazing, like a “check engine light” coming on to warn us of a problem in our vehicle, our craving unusual things or to an excess is usually a warning that we are lacking something like when we crave cheese, chocolate and nuts, it’s usually a magnesium deficiency. Craving mustard is a deficiency in Calcium, Thiamine, Manganese, Selenium and/or Potassium as stated above and although eating mustard is safe in moderate amounts, is there such a thing as too much? You’d probably have to work hard at it but if actually found a way to eat too much it would cause diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, otherwise the good news is that mustard has many health benefits including anti: cancer, bacterial, fungal, viral and inflammatory (think tumeric) as well as having wound healing properties. Will it cure anything? Obviously that’s not a promise anyone would make but it will help your body to defend itself, more research is needed when it comes to the scientific end of things.

Mustard is a good craving to have as it’s only 3 calories per teaspoon and not a signifcant source of sugar or carbs and it comes in so many varieties from so many mustard seeds, it’s what we choose to put it on that an be unhealthy but paired up with herbed salmon in the oven, maybe a creamy tofu salad or in any salad dressing would be wonderful, in fact I think that’s how I’ll make my next salmon dish! If you have any healthy recipes using mustard please feel free to share below, thank you for that and bon appetite everyone!