The Dangers of Radishes...and Other Important Things To Know About Cravings



Last night, as I was indulging in a 1:00 a.m. snack of potato chips and balsamic vinegar, it occurred to me that I was officially having one of those wacky pregnancy cravings that you always hear about.  I had gone to bed at 9:30, but stayed awake tossing and turning until 12:00 a.m.  At 12:00 a.m. my queasiness offered me a brief reprieve and, as I thought about what I should eat to help stave off low blood sugar in the morning, I became consumed with the idea of vinegar…until the urge to have it became so strong that I got out of bed and figured out a way to ingest the vinegar, short of downing it like a shot.  Potato chips seemed like a logical means to an end.

Up to this point in the pregnancy, I have had more food aversions than food cravings.  I have, for all intents and purposes, become a vegetarian because I’ve yet to find a form of meat that I can stomach.  Sometimes all I want are baked potatoes and saltine crackers, and sometimes the idea of starch makes my stomach turn.  Fruit Punch Gatorade has been my most faithful friend from the food world, but I would certainly not say that I ever crave Gatorade.  My “old faithfuls” that I thought would be the foods I would eat guilt-free in massive quantities during my pregnancy (desserts, steaks, chicken wings, pizza, lobster) have turned into my worst enemies…leaving my picky-eating-self with few options to indulge in.

All of this makes me think of the only fairy tale that I can think of that really involves pregnancy.  In Rapunzel, the poor couple who lived next to an enchantress’s garden wanted a child very badly.  They tried for years to get pregnant without success (Hmmmm….that sounds familiar).  Then, the wife finally got pregnant and the couple was overjoyed (Yep…still with it).  The wife began having terrible pregnancy cravings for…of all things…radishes (Yuck!).  I just so happened that lovely radishes grew in the enchantress’s garden.  In one version of the story, the wife was supposedly so overcome by the cravings that it was killing her.  So, the dutiful husband hopped on over the wall of the garden and stole some radishes for his wife…not once, or twice…but three times.  On the third trip into the garden, the husband got caught and, though he begged for mercy, the only deal he could strike with the enchantress (also infertile) was that he would give his child to the enchantress as soon as the child was born, to be raised as the enchantress’s own child.  The rest of the story has nothing to do with pregnancy…just bad mothering by the enchantress and hair…lots of hair. 

Now, most people read that part of the fairy tale and think that the moral is not to steal, but I beg to differ.  I would argue that the moral of the story is to not indulge the same pregnancy craving three times in a row…and maybe not to crave radishes.  I am not certain how the wife could even have wanted to eat radishes three nights in a row.  So far, when I’ve had a craving, the craving lasted for a matter of hours and, as soon as I satisfied the craving, that food got added to the “makes me throw-up if I look at it” list…at least for a few days.  The idea of craving the same food three times in a row is preposterous to me.  My theory is that the wife craved the radishes the first night and that her husband, trying to be helpful after seeing how happy they made her that first time, just kept getting them for her.  The wife was probably ditching the second night’s radishes in the garbage whenever the husband wasn’t looking.  (Kind of like I do when The Prince brings me home a tuna sandwich or my [pre-pregnancy] favorite kind of soup).