What is the best strategy to avoid and eliminate strong  desire to have food that is not beneficial? We could talk about overeating, amounts and quality of food some other time, let's concentrate on the food we may wish as such. 

Note: There is a ethical aspect to the problem: if eating some type of food is against your moral laws, nobody can make that decision for you - this is a very personal area. We can talk about that in Moral reasons.

Against Cravings

Freedom

You are free to choose what you eat. No food is exclusive in its nutritional qualities. You can exclude any particular food you want and get your nourishment from other sources. Respect your organism, liberate yourself from unneeded or harmful foods!

Gaining Understanding

First off all, we can outline two possible variations of the issue:  

• Doubt - we don't know whether we can rely on our wish, whether it is addictive (many foods actually are), or whether it reflects our body requirement; we don't now, whether we really need the food.
• Relative certainty - we are quite sure the food is either good or bad for us. 

Doubt

Craving may be a way of your body to let you know it needs this food or some of its components. If you are not sure that the food is not beneficial for you and you assume you could profit from eating it, research the food first! I would even say: research all foods you eat, but it very time consuming, that's why we want to help you with that on this site.

Research

Information sources

1. Results of scientific experiments, and known biochemical qualities of the ingredients.
2. Statistical data, which represents combined experience of other humans.
3. Individual testimonials.

Don't forget to find something not only about the effects of consuming this food, but also about the effects of avoiding it. The information must be relative to you (for example, if you are an adult, food requirements for babies won't help you much).

Reliability

You should try to find the most reliable and trustworthy sources of information, which is not easy. Some people, organizations and businesses may be bias in presenting knowledge, some of them may simply lie. Even scientist take in account not all the factors, they may see the issue only from one perspective, or have only limited interest in describing the outcome in their work. Nutritional science (dietology) is not a very developed science yet, research is sometimes funded by companies, producing certain foods - they probably would not publish negative information about own product. And we cannot always rely on opinions based on traditions or common believes either - too many people are getting sick too early in life.

Ask yourself about the information from the source:

• To what extent can you count on it?
• What is the primal source? Is it cited or interpreted?
• Is it one-sided? Are there reasons to distort it? (selling something, gaining fame, etc.) 
• Is it presented in numbers, provided with names and credentials if needed?
• Is it actual? Are there enough details?

To research a food with the help of internet search engines is not easy, normally one must go through opening of multiple pages and gather information by pieces. Don't give up, and use additional key words in your search, as well as exclusion of unneeded words, normally by adding "-" in front of the word. If you still see in the search results extrinsic word combinations, add all the unwanted words to your search line, it can look like this:
apple nutrient -iphone -store.

Relative Certainty

Dependent on the outcome of your research, you can specify the situation.

Mainly positive data

If the gathered information is rather favorable, but not explicit or you have your reasons to disregard the negative part, try to introduce the type of food you want in your diet, preferably isolated from other foods.  Pay close attention to the immediate and prolonged reactions of your body. Be highly aware for at least 3 days - the influence of a certain ingredient in food can be noticeable only after some ours or days, in some cases even weeks, and sometimes not at all - that's why we do the research first.

Positive all around

If this trial and error method, observation  and previously gathered facts tell you that the food is all right for you - just eat it and forget about cravings.

Negative own experience

It you feel not quite good after introducing questionable food, have unpleasant symptoms, but still crave for it, get rid of the craving itself, it is probably misleading, and may have something to do with emotional attachment, habit, addictive qualities of food, cultural conventionalities that does not fit you personally, etc. Your organism or your conditions can simply vary from those of other people. Your craving contradicts you real needs, so you should concentrate on correcting this discrepancy.

Here is an example of such situation from my own experience years ago. I craved many times for backed potatoes - it is not fruitarian food, but my wish was so strong that I became a bit uncertain. Researching potatoes (only organic and good conditioned potatoes came into question) gave me overall positive result. Till this day only the raw food concept is against cooked potatoes as far as I know, without proper explanation though. Some weight-loss advisers can tell you to avoid starches in big quantities, and that's it as far as I know. So I tried to eat them in isolation and I have discovered that they cause the following:
I had some negative effects too, here are few latest occasions I remember:
 - A few potatoes made me immediately tired and sleepy, and it felt like my body temperature went up.
 - Big thirst! I could drink a liter (1/4 gallon) of water after a small portion.
 - Pain in my throat - it started already few hours after and continued for a couple of days. Especially the next morning was troublesome.
I tried it many times - yes, I can be that silly, but the symptoms, especially the second one were strange, and I was trying to exclude other possible factors (coldness, for example). I happened to me few times before I realized they aren't good for me.
I have researched the issue in the internet and found only one person that reported the same! I decided to exclude potatoes even in smallest quantities and felt relieved.

Mostly negative data

If you have no history of eating this food or do not remember or sure how you feel with it in your diet, than, firstly, try to analyze, what ingredient of the food your body may want the most, try to understand, whether there are other wishes connected to this particular craving and what seem to be most attractive.

Let's imagine your aim is to eat high raw but you crave for french fries (pomme frites). If in the same time you feel that you could be satisfied with a rice and vegetables dish, it could be that you are low on carbs (carbohydrates) and that maybe you are under-eating on those. You may try to eat bananas or other fruits. If you feel that the fattiness of fries is the main attraction, you may need some essential fatty acids, and in this case it would be a good idea to eat avocado.

Be rational, discard unhelpful fear of missing something, and be resolved.

Secondly, ask yourself whether there are other explanations for the wish - you may have psychological reasons to want this food, everything not directly related to nutritious value of it. If yes, than you should better skip this meal and satisfy your prime emotional needs.

In some cases though, eating the food which is not the best but is able to calm you down, release the pressure, make you a little happier when you desperately need it, is the most preferable choice overall. Considering all aspects of you situation, you may try to let it be your psychological aid for the moment. Nobody knows your life better than you do. You must know though, that it won't work every time, that you maybe paying for the good feeling with your health, and that after this "helpful" meal you may realize your actual needs even sharper.

Still positive own experience

If you know that the food should be bad for many reasons, but you never had problems with it yourself, you may still try to eat it isolated from other foods and carefully observe the effects for several days.

You may also decide to eliminate this food from your diet solely out of precaution, to reduce the risks to get ill and potentially prolong your life.

Negative all around

If the food you are craving for is proven to be bad for you by scientific research and by experience of other people, in other words, if you

• either know from reliable sources that it would negatively influence our health in short or long run,
• or you have proven it to yourself by experience (better if more than once),

Then you don't need this food type to be a part of your diet. You should try to help yourself to get rid of the craving. It can be tricky, but there are some ways.

Remember and Forget results

This is an obvious but very important part, to memorize your results thoroughly. Create a vivid picture in your mind about the negative effects of consuming the food or write it down (save on your computer or in your records), you must be able to reach for it any time you need.

I was fullish enough to forget my conclusions and facts from my previous example with potatoes! That is my biggest problem: to remember unpleasant physiological feelings after wrongdoing, because on a good diet I feel so good  that it seams nothing can spoil that. Unfortunately, it is easy to destroy the balance and it can happen fast.

And then "forget" all about it! You have excluded the food from your diet, think about it as non-food, just reserve it for a survival situation only. If you see other people enjoin it - leave it to be their problem, not yours.

You can even be somewhat mystical in your willingness to eat only what you've decided to. You can create beautiful rituals and allow yourself be careless - the work is done, problem is solved, relax. Examine yourself only if needed, we are quite illogical in our desires.

Last time I've gotten a sudden wish on the street to try some restaurant food, it came out of nowhere, I needed to stop walking to gather my thoughts. I went home, jumped for 7-20 minutes, ate 3 pounds (1.5 kg) of fresh tasty apricots, and started to work on a complicated script. Hours went by, and I went to sleep, The next afternoon I recalled I had a craving, tried to analyze how I felt, and this procedure itself triggered the wish yet again!

I hope after reading this article you can forget it too :) Just keep the method.

Ways to deal with it

At first you may want just avoid being around the food. Don't buy it, don't go to the places where it is accessible, ask your friends and relatives to help you with it.

I have cravings as minimum several times a year, sometimes even 2-3 a month. Most of them have emotional nature - they are connected to good memories. In majority of cases it helps me to do things on the list below, maybe something could be helpful for you too.

1. Eat something else, preferably your favorite good food, even more than you eat usually if needed.
2. Drink water, half of a glass at a time, many times.
3. Brush your teeth and clean your tong - refresh your mouth.
4. Start to do something very interesting and meaningful, or go out and switch the environment.
5. Exercise more than 40 minutes: it helps. Or do a short set of very intense exercises.
6. Get enough sleep, especially if craving last more than a day: even a little sleep deprivation results in chemical disbalance in the body and increased appetite.
7. Remind yourself of known negative consequence of eating the food. Imagine how you are going to feel the next day. Realize, that eating itself would take only minutes, but the food would remain in your system for days (some of the unwanted elements of it can stay much longer).
8. Set your will to work for you and be proud of it. The chances are that the next day cravings are gone. My most persistent cravings survived not more than few weeks, and during this time were bugging me only sporadically. Unfortunately, few of them returned some other time.
9. Dive in a friendly and loving atmosphere: we may need not food at all and just try to substitute positive social emotions with easily attainable pleasure of saturation.
10. Get sexual satisfaction, you may need exactly that.
11. Get peace with yourself, care for yourself - you want to be healthy and alive for a very long time.
12. Some foods may remind us of happy times in our lives, and we want to relive them: be happy now, more happy than ever - it is easy, because life itself is so amazing. If you are not in the mood to be happy, be content.
13. Have some fun, any kind.
14. Have a tiny piece of this food, and give yourself time to think whether it worth it. Please keep in mind that generally it is not a good idea, because in some cases it can worsen and prolong the craving. But sometimes it works like a charm, and you may realize, that your idea about the taste of the food was more attractive than the real flavor.

What are your ways to deal with cravings?

Ha !  Those are good and entertaining strategies against cravings !  I'd add one more: perhaps a bit of self-torture, maybe pull out a few arm hairs or something every time you want some chips.  Create associatons of pain with unhealthy or immoral eating habits...  I've never actually tried it, but who knows, might work...     

Use the pain and pleasure principle to move you forward. As soon as you attach more pain than pleasure to eating cooked food at every emotional level of your mind, then you will achieve a 100% Raw-Food Diet

I would replace "Raw-Food Diet" with "Fruitarian Diet"—but apart from that I agree with these authors.