The myth of comfort food

Something to keep in mind at this time of year – there is no such thing as comfort food.

A research study that appears in Health Psychology from the American Psychological Association suggests that the benefits of what many of us attribute to “comfort food” are really benefits that occur naturally via the passage of time.

In the study, participants were shown videos that conveyed sadness or other negative moods.  Whether the respondents ate comfort food, non-comfort food, or nothing at all had no impact on how quickly they bounced back emotionally.  Nor does eating “comfort food” have any buffering effect on negative moods that are induced later.

 If you want to feel better after a bad day, just wait. It is the passage of time that helps, not anything specific that we eat. Maybe not even anything specific that we do.

I don’t think this necessarily suggests that some foods aren’t more meaningful or emotionally beneficial to us than others. Eating turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving probably brought back fond childhood memories in a way that eating a box of granola bars for dinner would not have, and one would surmise there is some emotional benefit to that, right? However, that might not necessarily mean those food would help you recover more quickly from a bad day.