It’s mom’s apple pie, backyard BBQ, mashed potatoes, or spaghetti. It could even be Elvis’s favorite breakfast sandwich, complete with butter, peanut butter, bacon, and bananas. Comfort food C everybody has their own version, and our attraction into it is probably based on having a good relationship using the person who first made it. Research by the University at Buffalo says so.
“Comfort foods in many cases are the foods that our caregivers gave us whenever we were children. So long we have positive association with the person who made that food, then there’s a strong possibility that you will be drawn to those meals during times of rejection or isolation,” says UB psychologist Shira Gabriel. “It could be understood as straight-up classical conditioning.” These bits of information should improve our understanding of how social factors influence our food preferences and eating behavior.
Previous research has revealed that comfort food can reduce feelings of rejection and isolation.?The most recent study, ‘Threatened belonging and preference for comfort food one of the securely attached‘, published within the journal Appetite, investigates why certain foods are attractive when we are feeling down.
The Buffalo team wanted to see if “securely attached individuals prefer comfort food due to its “social utility” (i.e., its capacity to fulfill belongingness needs).”
The study was in two parts one experiment and one daily diary study using two samples of students from the United States. In the Study 1 experiment of 77 students, the results of the ‘belongingness threat essay’ demonstrated that securely attached participants preferred the flavour of a comfort food more following the belongingness threat. In Study 2, with 86 participants, a 14-day daily diary program found that “securely attached individuals consumed more comfort food in reaction to naturally occurring feelings of isolation.”
The main findings were that comfort meals are associated with relationships (it has “social utility”), feeling isolated predicted how much people enjoy comfort food, and that threatening belonging led those with secure attachment to enjoy comfort food more.
“Because comfort food has a social function,” says Gabriel, “it is particularly attractive to us if we are feeling lonely or rejected. The current study helps us understand why we may be eating comfort foods even if we’re dieting or not particularly hungry.”
Everyone has their very own go-to goodies when they need comfort food. Some of the study participants made appropriate food choices. But, for many others, it was the starchy, fatty, gooey grub they turned to. For a lot of people, says Gabriel, the option of comfort food was the food they was raised eating.
“In an earlier study, we gave all the participants chicken noodle soup,” says Gabriel. “But only those who were built with a social connection to that soup identified it as being a comfort food and felt socially accepted after eating it.”
This research gives understanding of a distinctive way people can seem to be socially connected and safe C through eating comfort foods.? Because a threatened sense of belonging relates to physical and mental health problems, the researchers say it’s important to learn how that vulnerability could be managed.
However, this process of filling social needs isn’t without risks.? As Gabriel says, “Although comfort food will never break your heart, it might destroy your diet plan.” And remember C as one of Elvis’s friends liked to say “It wasn’t drugs that killed Elvis. It was breakfast.”
