Why comfort food

Adult Health. Resources for Adults. Children's Health. Resources for Children. Women's Health. Overview Specialty Care. Resources for Women. New Patient? Patient Services. Customer Service Hours. Refer a Patient Giving. Why UT Physicians? Play Video. News Why you crave comfort foods in times of high stress. Share on facebook. Share on twitter. Share on linkedin. How does this play out? Dig in! Imagine your favorite big holiday meal. In the U.

Are your salivary glands starting to activate? Can you almost smell the scents of so much home-cooked goodness? These many sources of food pleasure, originating in the body as well as the brain, can be nearly as satisfying as consuming the meal itself.

Even imagination, i. Glorious comfort food for Americans: Macaroni and cheese. Food that triggers the reward system has been shown to elevate mood and release stress, albeit temporarily. This experience, common to all of us, is often set off by foods — like family holiday meals — with which we associate a positive social memory. Physically, comfort foods work to make the body feel full or satisfied. Emotionally, the experience of eating can make us recall and re-experience a feeling of belonging or connectedness.

Our response — comfort — is often less about the stimulus, the food itself, than it is about the motivation behind it. That motivation is squarely in the emotions, and it can be described in one word: love. We devour comfort foods because, in essence, they remind us of being loved.

Researchers rated emotional responses to a comfort food found in many cultures: chicken soup. They discovered that those with the strongest positive responses to the stimulus also had stronger primal emotional relationships with family caregivers.

Bottom line? The more love you feel by eating chicken soup, the stronger your life relationships have been. Our bodies naturally secrete a wide array of substances to keep our internal systems running and to help us react to various stimuli in our environment. And dopamine production is stimulated by, among other things, the experience, and even the promise, of satisfying foods. Everything from reading a good book to sex brings forward a dopamine response.

And, of course, drugs from nicotine to opiates rely on dopamine to enhance the sensations you feel while using them. Released when expecting a reward, dopamine soon comes to be associated with pleasure. Simple anticipation may be enough to raise its levels.

Dopamine guides people to prioritize pleasure in all their interactions with substances like food and drugs. While stress often makes bodies crave the release of dopamine, a rush of the hormone adds to a pleasurable response. So when you eat a comfort food that tastes good and is rewarding, you get a rush of dopamine. Your brain remembers this connection between your behaviour the comfort food you ate and the reward the positive feeling. You may be more motivated to continue that behaviour i.

As a dietitian, I always say that food unites us. My dad is a chef and to me, food is an expression of love. I remember when Jamie Oliver was here in Toronto in , promoting his new cookbook. Comfort foods offer a sense of belonging. On top of that, baking and cooking together offers psychosocial benefits.