Why Comfort Food Makes Us Feel Better

You’ve likely experienced those kinds of nights before, haven’t you? Every emotion felt incredibly difficult to carry. This can be due to heartbreak, or simply feeling exhausted or perhaps experiencing something a little more mundane. You opened the cupboard to find that one dish—the one that was a blank slate, always ready for you without any questions.

Perhaps it was a warm baked mac and cheese, a bowl of piping hot pho, or a secret dish your grandmother made when the world outside felt too chaotic. You took that first bite and felt something inside of you melt. It felt so close to magic. Now dear reader, does this sound relatable? This is what comfort food is. Unlike it’s counterparts, it’s not characterized by a flavor. Comfort food has it’s own identity and definition and that is a feeling of comfort wrapped around us like a warm blanket.

To put it simply, comfort food is certainly not about fancy ingredients and recipes. It’s about warmth, love, nostalgia, and why we as humans yearn for something to hold onto when everything around us is chaotic and feels unreliable. Now, let us understand why some meals are far deeper than just the numbers they show on the scale.

Allow yourself to ponder over questions like, “Why does comfort food make us feel better,” not only on a physical level, but emotionally, and even spiritually.

Key Takeaways

• Food that helps provide comfort, allows us to reminisce while offering refuge and anchors us in safety.
• When it comes to soothing meals, our bodies and brains tend to have an automatic reaction.
• When it comes to aware eating, the approach when engaging with food is shifted from blindly seeking solace in food to healing with it.
• Food, especially cultural dishes, are comforting as they offer a sense of identity and hallmark home.
• Cooking in and of itself can be an act of self care along with eating.

A Taste That Takes Us Home

Home is defined as the best feeling one can reminisce about and can unfurl anywhere across the globe. From the sense of smell to the feeling of hands gently holding together an elegant material flame sparks the nostalgia of a home. Cinnamon resonates with winter mornings, tomato soup resonates with the cold and many more accordances.

Every comfort food has its distinct mark of alleviation attached to it. The predominant point is not about the dish itself, but the smile the dish pulls from the person consuming alongside the abundant memories. This can explain as to why buttered toast feels a heals a longing heart. Through the lens of love, bread twists into memories awaiting to be carved.

Psychologist state the links between sense and memories are far stronger in connection with taste and smell.

Food brings out memories one was not previously aware of where they were kept dormant and hence works like magic. Food brings out brisk winter mornings, filled kitchens soaked in laughter, the tranquility of a lover lying across a tabletop doped with shadows and warmth and beautiful silence.

The urge to eat these foods isn’t driven by physical hunger; it’s about nostalgia, about remembering softer times in life. Deep inside, it is still possible to feel like that child, or that teenager, who actually felt special because someone took the time to prepare something warm to eat.

The Brain Eats Too

Your brain is far more active than you might think, especially considering the fact that it begins functioning the moment you start eating. Foods like cereals, pasta, rice, or freshly baked bread are comforting because they help release serotonin. The foods we enjoy the most are the ones that soothe us during moments of distress because they help ease our emotions. Imagine how creamy, warm, or even soft foods heal us while salads do absolutely nothing when it comes to comfort.

During periods of intense anxiety, your heart races, your muscles go tense, and your thoughts scatter. Methods of soothing this intense overdrive include consuming familiar foods because they trigger parasympathetic responses: decreasing your heart rate, increasing digestion, and putting you in a safe headspace. Once you begin consuming warm food, your body begins sending signals that help remove you from fight/flight response states, instead placing you into rest-and-digest states.

Furthermore, the combination of gut and brain showcases neurons from our entire digestive system. Soothing our mind is made simple through our gut. It goes to show how something as easy as warm rice or a soft cup of porridge can instantly reset your soul.

More Than Hunger

Have you ever experienced a moment— or even several— where you found yourself gazing blankly at the fridge intently? It wasn’t because you needed any food. You were longing for something else entirely. Perhaps it was a soothing sensation or relief—the feeling that you could finally relax. This is what emotional hunger feels like. More to the point, comfort food does not ease the ache of emotional hunger, rather it creates the space that accommodates it.

Marketing may have positioned an ideal of graceful living, but aiming to soothe one’s core struggle will expose one to health related issues overly focused on physical aspects. Emotional hunger is real. It evokes the strong feeling of shame, so it is not ideal to eat even when feeling overly stressed out, you can’t lie to your body. You can defend yourself but beware, we munch foods out of need not just to survive, but to heal ourselves.

Excessive comfort foods may lead to dangerous lifestyle, yet the root cause is lack of awareness. Perhaps we need a paradigm shift, and use the grace of outer knowledge as a guide when relief is required and applied with care. By looking rationally and mindfully for the lack and solutions we can easily attain gracefulness and mindfulness while eating comforting foods. This enables us to feel confident knowing it is a balm and not masking the sensations to be silenced or numb.

The Flavors of Where We Come From

To each their own when it comes to comfort food. For some, it might be mashed potatoes with gravy. For others, it could be rice topped with a fried egg and soy sauce. Each culture has foods associated with feelings of safety and identity. Hence, western civilization’s comfort food falls in the category of culture. It shapes us as individuals and gives hints to who we are prior to facing the world, what our history entails, and how affection was displayed in times when words did not do the job.

While immigrants, students, and travelers are moving away from home, they tend to miss the food more than the places. Unlike the places, food requires no thought to remember. You have the ability to recreate it, however different the surroundings may be. It is not only taste but that feeling of being grounded for someone from Mexico cooking pozole in a New York apartment or a Korean making kimchi stew in Berlin.

Comfort food shrinks continents and brings together people from different generations. Even when the world appears unsettling, it is something that let’s you know that you and your heart are still welcomed.

The Ritual Is The Remedy

Culinary artistry doesn’t begin with the first bite for some. For some it begins with the peeling of a potato, the mixing of the soup, or the comforting magic of watching dough rise. These movements are soothing as they allow the person to settle their minds and slow down. Quieting the chaos. Cooking isn’t about the end result for such an individual. In fact, it’s about the comfort the act brings and the promise of structure.

When reheating two-day-old stew, the act of self-care begins. It’s more than just food. It captures a memory, evidence that this individual took care of themselves at one point in time, and is reminding themselves they’re capable of caring for themselves and it in the present.

The reason comfort food is often perceived as greasy or indulgent is because it evokes very pleasurable memories. But what if it’s much more than that? What if taking the time to cook that comforting dish is an act of resilience? What if that old recipe card tucked away in the drawer is actually a form of prayer?

When The Bowl Is Empty But The Heart Is Full

There are times when the most you can handle is warming water for noodles, and that is perfectly valid. There are other times when sitting on the floor and having a plate of buttered toast is your personal way to heal. Again, that is perfectly valid. Nourishment need not be exceptional in order to restore one’s energy. It merely needs to be true.

Perhaps, and I stress ‘perhaps’, there is no other reassurance than the realization that you can nourish yourself not just for energy, but for emotion and comfort. You can boldly claim, “I’m not okay,” and go onto heat something that reminds you that, “But I will be.”

My Opinion

Let us now backtrack a little and explore what comfort food offers us. It offers us does not an escape, rather, it is our presence. It states: here you are, still trying, still managing to breathe and still managing to be alive, while battling the ever-evolving world around you. Sinking down with a favorite dish, whether alone or accompanied by others, gives you the chance to cultivate inner tranquility in a beautifully chaotic world.

So I encourage you to indulge in your comfort food unapologetically. Savor it lovingly, blend it with memories. And truly understand that when you are consuming, you are nourishing the spirit that lives within.

There’s no shame in wanting to hold what comforts you. What matters is the kindness in which you pursue it.