The Lincoln Log

Comfort food is defined as food or drink to which one habitually turns for temporary respite, security, or special reward. That means those last fifteen waffles you gobbled down when your girlfriend told you she wasn’t into you anymore wasn’t because you realized you were in front of IHOP, it’s because waffles comfort you.    

It’s the food we run to after something in our lives go terribly wrong. That’s why you find yourself craving a chunk of mouth watering, dark Hershey’s chocolate after a big fight with your parents, a dreaded report card, or heartbreak.

The term comfort food was added into the Webster’s dictionary in 1972 and it’s still a popular item to talk about. Talk shows, health magazines and food networks all have materials on comfort food. World-class chefs have made recipes for comfort foods, books are written on low carb comfort food; it is quite a large category since comfort food refers to many different types of food. Whether it’s the creamy, silky smear on bagels, the spicy, steaming bowl of chili, your grandma’s home sweet home apple pie, or the sweet and salty Chinese cuisine, they are all part of the different varieties of comfort food. The relaxation you receive is more than the taste, it can be the way your fingers wrap around a cup of hot chocolate hoping absorb the warmth on a cold winter day. The sweet aroma of cocoa beans and marsh mellows that seems to snuggle up your noise. How the little marshmallows seem to float around in dark brown melted chocolate when you stir it with your spoon, like a little person screaming not to drown in a tornado. The taste of the sugar hot liquid that burns your tongue, but you continue to drink anyhow. All the effects of a cup of hot chocolate can comfort a person.

Relying on foods to on release stress or pain actually has problems of it’s own. Most comfort food contains unhealthy ingredients which can cause acne, bloating or weight gain. An overdose of comfort food can even increase your cholesterol levels and blood pressure which leads to a higher risk of heart attacks or even cause diabetes.

Then why do we use it? Research shows that the cortisol steroid hormone, which has one of the main functions of your stress-response system, gets a hormonal signal when stressed for over one full day. Those hormonal signal responses for the person to find a way to calm down and brighten up. Healthy behaviors are exercising, reading, talking, or even crying. More downside behaviors could be turning to drugs or and harming yourself and others.

Between that lays the urge of eating high-energy foods. Most comfort food contains a lot of complex or simple carbohydrates, such as sugar or refined wheat. Foods containing these ingredients have the ability to trick the brain to have an opiate-like feeling, having the person who consumed the food to feel more soothed or relaxed. So it’s true that comfort foods do actually delivers reassuring feelings. It’s a way of being calm and relaxed without having anyone knowing what’s going on except you. It’s a way of comforting yourself without useless advice and other’s people judgments.

The reason we find ourselves craving that one item is because you share a familiarity. Children have a habit of latching themselves to blankets, toy and even food. When in a high stress situation, we naturally run to what is familiar to us. Children are more likely to stick with one comfort food. Since adults seem to be more open and less, that is why we develop a larger range of comfort food.

Comfort food seems has multiple expectations and reliance from individuals of different sort. Some rely on eating to fix problems, other use it as an escape, while others eat because they are either lost or confused on what to do. But even through our frustrations, we need to understand that comfort food cannot fix problems. It isn’t a way out and you can’t eat forever.

It may be refreshing to occupy your mind for awhile and numb the pain down a bit, but it doesn’t mean that after you finish eating, the problem won’t exist anymore. We have to face our problems whether stress, pressure or disappointments. It is a part of life, and using comfort food to fix problem is trying to take a shortcut that leads to a dead end. You can try to get lost for awhile, but unfortunately, we all have to get back unto the real road. We all have to face our issues.That is just what we call life.