Maltese Cravings or Cancer Clues? Doctors Reveal What Your Kinnie Habit Might Really Mean

**Can Kinnie Cravings Be a Canary in the Coal Mine? What Maltese Doctors Say About Food Urges and Cancer**

It’s 3 a.m. in Birkirkara and Rita Camilleri, 57, is elbow-deep in a jar of bigilla, spooning the peppery bean paste onto yesterday’s ftira. Three weeks later she’s diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer. Coincidence? Maybe not. Oncologists at Mater Dei Hospital tell Hot Malta they’re seeing a rising number of patients who report intense, even bizarre food cravings in the months before diagnosis—cravings that, in hindsight, feel like the islands themselves were whispering a warning.

Dr. Daniela Azzopardi, consultant at the hospital’s Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre, pulls up a 2022 internal audit: 38 % of Maltese patients surveyed remembered “going to extremes” for specific tastes—vinegary ġbejniet, licorice-black imqaret, or neat shots of ġulepp tal-ħelu. “We’re not saying a sudden lust for pastizzi equals cancer,” she stresses, “but the metabolic chaos that tumours create can hijack appetite pathways. When that happens, the foods you reach for are often the ones your grandmother swore by—only amplified.”

On an island where cuisine is identity, those signals can be deafening. Take Kinnie, the bittersweet soft drink invented in 1952. Sales figures from Simonds Farsons Cisk show a mysterious 12 % spike in January–March 2023, a period that overlapped with a 9 % rise in new oncology referrals once lockdown backlogs cleared. Correlation isn’t causation, but local GPs have coined the phrase “Kinnie sign” for middle-aged patients who suddenly knock back two cans a day, then turn up with iron-deficiency anemia that heralds colon cancer.

Folk memory already keeps a shortlist of “body alarms.” Elders recite the proverb “Il-ġisem jgħidlek qabel it-tabib” (“the body tells you before the doctor”). In Gozo, 78-year-old farmer Ċensu Pace swears his wife started pickling onions by the jar before her ovarian cancer was caught. “She hated onions all her life,” he tells us, voice cracking over coffee in Xlendi. “When she began eating them like apples, I should have known.”

Nutritionist Rebecca Vella, who runs Valletta’s popular “Mediterranean Reset” clinic, urges perspective. “Cravings can also mean polycystic ovaries, diabetes, or simply stress after a night at Paceville,” she laughs. Yet she now screens clients with a three-question Maltese Food Craving Index: Is the urge new within six months? Does it wake you up? Do local, seasonal foods taste different? If two answers are yes, she refers for blood work. Since 2021, six clients have thanked her for early picks-ups—three breast, two prostate, one lymphoma.

The community ripple is tangible. Band club noticeboards in Żejtun carry posters headlined “Ma tixtieqx ikla? Smell the warning!” funded by the Marigold Foundation. Chef Rafel Sammut has reworked his Marsaxlokk menu to offer “craving-smart” small plates—low-sugar imqaret, baked not fried—so patrons can indulge without ignoring red flags. Even Archbishop Charles Scicluna mentioned the phenomenon in a recent homily, urging parishioners to “listen to the body God gave you, then consult doctors, not just Facebook.”

What should you do if your inner voice starts screaming for fenkata (rabbit stew) at dawn? Mater Dei’s Dr. Azzopardi offers simple advice: track it. “Keep a seven-day diary—what, when, how much. If the craving persists and is accompanied by weight change, night sweats, or fatigue, see your GP. Bring the diary. We’d rather investigate ten false alarms than miss one tumour.”

Back in Birkirkara, Rita Camilleri is now post-surgery, ringing the oncology ward’s bell next month. She laughs that her first post-op request was, predictably, bigilla. “But this time I tasted it properly—no frenzy. I think my body just wanted me to notice something was off.” Her consultant smiles: “The tumour spoke in Maltese. Luckily, we understood before it was too late.”