Maybe it’s the spring weather, or maybe it’s just a side effect of talking so much about the benefits of eating lots of fruits and vegetables, but I’ve been craving green foods like crazy lately. I may or may not say this a lot, but it’s true!

Here are a few recent favorites:

Gorgeous Tofu Salad at Le Pain Quotidien

Green Smoothie

Eggs with rice, spinach, asparagus, and miso-tahini sauce

Pesto

I like to think that food cravings are not just random. While some are obviously sparked by external cues (walking past a diner on a weekend morning, for example, may trigger an intense craving for bacon), it’s possible that they may be internal cues from our body trying to tell us what it needs.

A classic example is experiencing a mysterious craving for steak when your iron level is low. I also had a friend who said she became obsessed with arugula and orange juice (both of which are high in folic acid) right before she found out she was pregnant. Some say salt cravings may point to an issue with the kidneys and that a hankering for chocolate could point to a magnesium deficiency. Anyway, you get the idea.

I think in my case, it’s the vibrant color that draws me in. After a dreary winter that involved way too much work and stress, bright green is uplifting and energizing yet calming at the same time. My mother, the psychotherapist, would probably also ask me about my heart chakra, which is associated with the color green, but that would be a post for a whole other kind of blog.

It could also be that my brain is still in tax mode. I’ve been thinking about money quite a bit—perhaps I’m subconsciously trying to attract more of that kind of green stuff into my life. If anyone can say whether that works, let me know! Man, it would be a lot easier to get people to eat leafy greens if you could tell them it would make them rich.

But hey, “health is wealth,” right?