Food always brings the best comfort
Article written by Sehrish Amjad & Angel Martis, Interns at Heart It Out, Bangalore
From digging into ice-cream tubs after a break-up (cliché, I know) to devouring forkfuls of hot Maggi noodles when you’re missing home to sipping on some delicious wine after a long day — the common factor is the feeling of instant comfort. During testing times or even when you’re just feeling a little blue, be it a stressful day at work, a fight with a loved one or just one of those bad days when NOTHING seems to go your way, eating comfort food at the end of the day — or right in the middle — helps many people to keep pushing through, against the tide.
The term comfort food, first appeared in 1997 in The Washington Post, referring to those food items whose consumption helped provide people with a sense of consolation and the feeling of well-being. A study (Wagner, et.al., 2014) found that comfort food is usually (unfortunately :P) high in calorific value and tends to be associated with childhood memories or a happier time in one’s life.
One can find support for the same in common sayings like “there is no better feeling than a warm pizza box on your lap”, “mom’s dal chawal warms up the soul for days” or “nothing replaces the nostalgia of fighting with siblings over who deserves the last slice of pizza the most.”.
While what can be comforting to one may not be to others, owing to diversity and subjectivity of feeling comfortable — food seems to be a go-to for many in terms of dealing with overwhelming emotions. Another common factor amongst most comfort food is the oral-somatosensory qualities. In layman terms — what they feel like in the mouth. For instance, people taste umami (savouriness) through taste receptors that typically respond to amino acids — glutamates and nucleotides, which are widely present in meat broths and fermented products. For example, Glutamates are commonly added to some foods in the form of monosodium glutamate or MSG — the fermented starch or sugar and is used to enhance the flavour of savoury sauces, salad dressings, and soups. (commonly found in Chinese takeout) which create the sensations we crave (Nelson G et al. 2002).
“It takes a lot to create the rush of sensations that make us feel safe, calm and cared for. It’s a complex interplay of memory, history and brain chemistry, and while some basics apply — most of us are soothed by the soft, sweet, smooth, salty and unctuous — the specifics are highly personal.”
- Anneli Rufus, ‘How comfort foods work like Prozac’
Why do you and I scream for an ice cream?
The belief that comfort food can be linked to a specific person, place or time with which the food has a positive association helps explain why most people indulge eating comfort food when experiencing negative emotions. This is also the most common representation of comfort food in the media, be it delving into a chocolate cake after break up or crunching on chips after someone’s death. Foods high in sugar, fat, or salt tend to elevate mood by stimulating the brain’s reward system. In fact, according to Psychology Today, the same reward and pleasure centres associated with drug addiction are active when comfort foods are consumed.
While it has been argued that eating healthy also seems to evoke feelings of well-being, what distinguishes this feeling from the one experienced while eating comfort food is the emotional association it has had with people or memories and also the narrow range of food items considered to provide that feeling. For example, many people find their grandmother’s Rajma Chawal recipe can be comforting. Or maybe it’s going to McDonald’s after a night out with friends and without realizing if McChicken is now comfort food.
Be it in every scene wherein Monica buries her face in a tub of ice cream or a bowl of spaghetti in Friends or the cutest proposal in the movie Premam (2015), wherein the character of Nivin Pauly proposes to his love (played by Madonna Sebastian) with a red velvet cake, her reaction being everything, these instance leave the sweetest tastes in our mouth (pun intended!)
Recent research (Troisi, J. D., & Gabriel, S, 2011) has also found that the need to avoid loneliness sometimes leads people to seek out social surrogates which can be explained as non-human social targets. Social surrogates (anything that substitutes for an actual social situation and provides the same benefits), may take many forms-quotes from favourite Netflix series, one-sided relationships with celebrities or even photographs and letters — each fulfilling a belonging need.
Comfort food is thus also considered to be a form of a social surrogate. While it may seem comforting to sink your teeth into a buttery piece of pie, a moment on the lips can forever be on the hips, and heart! Despite all of the unhealthy ingredients, you don’t have to banish comfort foods from your diet! That could lead to a feeling of deprivation, which can trigger an eating binge. Instead, try placing a limit on how often you eat your comfort food favorites and the portion size when you do have them. A little indulgence once in a while won’t hurt you. Dietary guidelines recommend limiting saturated fat to no more than 10% of your daily calories. The American Heart Association recommends a daily salt intake of no more than 2,300 milligrams (mg), and an ideal target of less than 1,500 mg (especially if you have high blood pressure or heart disease).
While, it is of course completely okay to indulge and find comfort in food — it could also help to try to find what kind of emotions cause you to turn to comfort from food & about perhaps finding other coping mechanisms. One instance could be when you feel angry, you may reach out for a bag of fries or something sugary. Instead, one could go for a jog or dance their feelings out and find the same satisfaction due to a pump in endorphins and adrenaline. Next time you find yourself feeling sad or overwhelmed, try playing with a pet or keeping self busy with chores like cleaning or doing the laundry.
Living the new normal via the old stuffed refrigerator
With pandemic led lockdowns in several parts of the world, talks of a “new normal” soaring with uncertainties and many changes in most daily routines including social interactions, being stuck at home, the increase in the consumption of comfort food was only expected. I mean, let’s be honest — how many of us stocked up on our favourite snacks to munch on late into the night and found ourselves ordering in from our favourite restaurants reminiscing the good times.
A natural assumption is thus, that comfort food in the times of COVID-19 is playing the role of a social-surrogate for socializing, which has mostly become virtual and provides a sense of belongingness. We also witnessed an increase in the variety of supplies in grocery stores given that many restaurants and cafes remained closed for a long time. There was also a surge in “home recipes” (a.k.a quarantine cooking/baking) and foods that provided comfort like banana bread and cold coffee became the latest trends. This also further provided an opportunity to socialize with others while making our favourite recipes and sharing stories of the past. So, while comfort food has indeed helped people sail through their emotional turmoil during these testing times, the lockdown itself provided opportunities to add more items to their list of comfort food — like cinnamon rolls or feta cheese pasta, yummmm!
All in all here’s what can be taken from all the research conducted on comfort foods so far- It caters to our mental health in the long run, playing the role of a social surrogate now more than ever. To put it simply, comfort food lifts up the soul when one needs it the most, however one must refrain from habituating self from substituting food as a solution to every mentally and physically challenging situation.
REFERENCES
Rufus, A. (2011, June). How comfort foods work like Prozac: the psychology behind why we turn to fatty staples like French fries and fried chicken when life gets rough. Retrieved from Gilt Taste: http://www.webcitation.org/6XeO3Tlsm?url=http://www.salon.com/ 2011/06/23/comfort_food_psychology
Scarmozzino, F; Visioli, F;. (2020). Covid-19 and the Subsequent Lockdown Modified Dietary Habits of Almost Half the Population in an Italian Sample. Padova: MDPI.
Spence, C. (2017). Comfort food: A review. International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, 105–109.
Spence, C., & Piqueras-Fiszmanm, B. (2016). Oral-somatosensory contributions to flavor perception and the appreciation of food and drink. In B. Piqueras-Fiszmanm, & C. Spence, Multisensory Flavor Perception: From Fundamental Neuroscience Through to the Marketplace. (pp. 59–79). Duxford: Elsevier.
Troisi, J. D., & Gabriel, S. (2011). Chicken Soup Really Is Good for the Soul: “Comfort Food” Fulfills the Need to Belong. Psychological Science, 747–753.
Wagner, H. S., Ahlstrom, B., Redden, J. P., Vickers, Z., & Mann, T. (2014). The Myth of Comfort Food. Health Psychology, 33, 1552–1557.
Nelson G, Chandrashekar J, Hoon MA, Feng L, Zhao G, Ryba NJ, Zuker CS March. (2002) “An amino-acid taste receptor”. Nature. 416(6877): 199–202. Bibcode:2002Natur.416..199N. doi:10.1038/nature726. PMID 11894099.
Delay ER, Beaver AJ, Wagner KA, Stapleton JR, Harbaugh JO, Catron KD, Roper SD (October 2000). “Taste preference synergy between glutamate receptor agonists and inosine monophosphate in rats”. Chemical Senses. 25 (5): 507–15. doi:10.1093/chemse/25.5.507. PMID 11015322.
“Umami taste receptor identified”. Nature. February 2007. Archived from the original on 5 March 2013. Retrieved 26 June2013.