When life feels overwhelming (personally, professionally, societally, etc.) many turn to food for comfort. That might look like hunting down your favorite snack at the store, spending all day recreating your grandmother’s Sunday dinner, or opting for the gooiest, cheesiest, most decadent dish on the menu.
Whatever shape your ultimate comfort food may take—hot or cold, homemade or prepackaged—you select it for its potential to soothe. You hope that, by savoring this dish, you’ll feel a bit better. Comforted, for lack of a better word.
Take the pandemic for example: In 2020, Google searches for “comfort food” spiked. In a September 2020 survey, nearly 70% of the respondents said they were consuming more comfort food. Consolation in the chaos.
What gives these foods their universal power? Why do the smell, taste, and even just the thought of certain foods bring us solace?
Classifying Comfort Food
Comfort food is very individualistic; everyone has a different vision of the best comfort food, but it’s often thought of as something soothing, familiar, and nostalgic. And, because food is engrained in culture, popular selections vary across the world, from goulash in Hungary to udon in Japan.
Despite its breadth, its purpose is clear: offer emotional comfort. According to the results of one North American survey, 81 percent of those asked either agreed or strongly agreed that eating their preferred comfort food would make them feel better.¹
So, while some researchers aim to further characterize comfort food as unhealthy, hyperpalatable, or calorie-dense, it’s the associated feelings that matter most.¹
Rooted in Memories
Comfort foods tend to either be one’s favorite foods from childhood or foods linked to a specific person, place, or time with a positive association. If you were sick as a child and your mom made you a certain dish (like chicken noodle soup), you’ll associate that food with care and nurture—potentially causing you to crave it as an adult when you feel in need of that emotional nourishment. Holiday celebrations and the foods involved are also often associated with strong emotional responses: Past sensory experiences with food shape our emotional response to it and are linked to memories.²
Scents are also tied to memories. The part of the brain responsible for processing smell is connected to the amygdala and the hippocampus, regions of the brain that process emotions and handle memories, respectively.³ Our memory for smells is enduring and precise; a wafting smell from a bakery can transport you back to your childhood neighbor’s house, playing as their mom pulled cookies out of the oven.
Comfort Foods Combat Feelings of Loneliness
Research shows that we can crave comfort food when we’re feeling lonely.⁴ By triggering positive memories of past social interactions, especially for people who have secure attachments (healthy emotional bonds formed in childhood with a caregiver), comfort food can help alleviate feelings of loneliness and buffer against belongingness threats (fears that one is not accepted in social groups or relationships).⁵
You don’t even have to eat to feel some of the benefits: Social psychologists have studied the connection between holding something warm, like a steaming cup of tea or bowl of soup, and feeling more interpersonal warmth.⁶ In fact, even just writing about your favorite comfort foods can be beneficial.
Do Comfort Foods Actually Bring Comfort?
When we’re stressed, our preferences for different tastes, aromas, flavors, and texture can change.⁷ Crave sweet, carb-heavy, or fatty food when you’re feeling down? You’re not alone. Many of the common comfort foods are high in these because they provide a short-term physiological boost; carbohydrates and fat activate the brain’s reward center, releasing dopamine and serotonin.⁸ As a result, mood is briefly enhanced.
Because of the fleeting nature of this mood boost, some believe that the concept of comfort food is just a lay theory, driving behavior and setting expectations for responses without a strong foundation in science. As a result, we’re likely to accept personal experiences for validation (i.e., believing that a pint of Cherry Garcia does indeed make us feel better). However, as we learned above, it could be argued that comfort foods work by alleviating social isolation (not just temporarily lifting mood).
Ultimately, comfort foods get their power from our belief in them. They’re highly emotional, tied to both happy memories and feelings of stress and loneliness. When we sit down to indulge, it’s a similar quest for comfort and coping mechanism that pressing play on your favorite movie or pulling on your favorite sweater is.
Sources
¹Spence, C. (2017). Comfort food: A review. International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, 9, 105–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2017.07.001
²Pereira, J. M., Guedes Melo, R., de Souza Medeiros, J., Queiroz de Medeiros, A. C., de Araújo Lopes, F., & Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (2024). Comfort food concepts and contexts in which they are used: A scoping review protocol. PloS one, 19(4), e0299991. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299991
³Mouly, A. M., & Sullivan, R. (2010). Memory and plasticity in the olfactory system: From infancy to adulthood.In A. Menini (Ed.), The neurobiology of olfaction (Chapter 15). CRC Press/Taylor & Francis. Available from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK55967/
⁴Troisi, J. D., Gabriel, S., Derrick, J. L., & Geisler, A. (2015). Threatened belonging and preference for comfort food among the securely attached. Appetite, 90, 58–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.02.029
⁵Troisi, J. D., & Gabriel, S. (2011). Chicken soup really is good for the soul: "comfort food" fulfills the need to belong. Psychological science, 22(6), 747–753. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611407931
⁶Williams, L. E., & Bargh, J. A. (2008). Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5901), 606–607. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1162548
⁷Heath, T. P., Melichar, J. K., Nutt, D. J., & Donaldson, L. F. (2006). Human taste thresholds are modulated by serotonin and noradrenaline. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 26(49), 12664–12671. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3459-06.2006
⁸Wurtman, R. J., & Wurtman, J. J. (1988). Do carbohydrates affect food intake via neurotransmitter activity?. Appetite, 11 Suppl 1, 42–47.
