Eating Your Feelings

Figure 4

 

I’ve been there too.  You’re feeling a little down, maybe your significant other and you got in a fight or broke up.  You find yourself at the freezer, cold air blasting at your face and sneaking down to your feet…and there it is: your favorite chocolate ice cream.  After all, chocolate ice cream has the magical healing powers to mend your broken heart.  Whether your go-to mood lifter is ice cream, mac and cheese, or mom’s leftover meat loaf, comfort food provides an immediate sense of emotional relief that burning your ex-boyfriend’s sweater just doesn’t deliver. 

When I look back on my fondest memories of home or family gatherings, food is almost always involved.  This makes sense, as preparing food and eating is primarily a social activity. As a child, just about every night before I went to bed my dad and I shared a bowl of ice cream and looked at the moon.  So, now when I have some ice cream, I get the warm fuzzies and think about my childhood home. This is an example classic Pavlov conditioning: “an environmental event that previously had no relation to a given reflex could, through experience, trigger a reflex” (Fredholm).  In other words, ice cream gives me the sense of being comforted even if I’m thousands of miles away from home and my dad.

               So our brains are to blame then, right?  Not exactly.  Although psychologically an individual may associate certain food with a feeling of comfort, diving into that half gallon of Blue Bell is choosing to gain immediate emotional relief rather than actually deal with the problem at hand.  It’s like treating a recurring headache with fast-acting pills rather than going to the doctor and seeing if it’s something more serious.  Americans shouldn’t be using food as a way to treat their problems.  That’s how The Biggest Loser wound up being a popular television show.  Sure, eating is associated with being around loved ones, being social, and celebrating special occasions.  This doesn’t mean that food itself should be labeled as something more than what nourishes our bodies.  Make sure the next time you’re looking at the chocolate ice cream nutrition label that you’re not mentally inserting comfort into the list of ingredients. 

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Figure 4 is not the Nutrition Facts for all comfort food, just my personal comfort food, a half-gallon of Blue Bell milk chocolate ice cream.