Comfort Food Myth Debunked: It’s all in the mind!

“Are you in a not-so-good mood today? C’mon, let’s eat your favorite comfort food!” How many times did your friend offer you this just to uplift your mood? We all believed that indulging with our well-loved ice cream, pizza, pasta or pastries eventually did the magic of turning our mood 360 degrees, but no, food has nothing to do with it.

According to Traci Mann, a psychologist in University of Minnesota, there’s no such thing as “comfort food as magic solution to our problem.” Negative moods like anger, fear, anxiety, sadness and jealousy naturally dissipate over time. People just believed that whenever they eat their comfort food, it automatically shifts their mood into a good one.

The Study / Session

Together with her colleagues at the University of Minnesota, Mann invited a total of 100 students in different groups to participate in two sessions to watch an 18-minute videos of films clips evoking negative emotions. But first, they asked them to enlist the foods that would make them feel better and then make them answer a questionnaire to determine their mood. They were also given the chance to self-describe their comfort food.

In another session, each participant was given one of their non comfort food and asked to sit in silence for three minutes and then make them fill out another set of questionnaire. The result showed that participants’ mood changed or improved even after eating their non-comfort food. Therefore, they came to a conclusion that food has no effect on mood.   

Conclusion

The catch is, our comfort food choices are based or influenced by the foods that we enjoy eating during our childhood. The satisfaction, contentment and happiness that we used to believe our comfort food brings is all in our mind.

Does this mean we should stop eating our so-called comfort food whenever we feel bad? Of course not! After all, who can resist the delectable Italian, American or Australian cheese brands? How about the chocolates, cakes, ice creams, and all other desserts and pastries? Who wouldn’t be happy feasting with any or all of those? Just eat whatever that will make you feel utterly happy, still don’t forget to be responsible with the servings.

“What you can conceive, you can achieve,” that’s how powerful our minds are.