Feeling sad or stressed? Put down that Oreo or bowl of macaroni and cheese and brace yourself for another bummer: The emotional healing powers of comfort food might be overrated.
True, your mood probably will improve shortly after you eat your favorite high-carb hug, but no more so than if you’d eaten a granola bar — hardly a fixture in the “comfort food” category.
In a study published in the journal Health Psychology, researchers at the University of Minnesota found that even when you don’t soothe yourself with food, your mood probably will bounce back on its own.
“People have this belief that high-calorie foods are the path out of difficult feelings,” said Kelly D. Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, who studies obesity and behavior and was not involved in this research.
“But the assignment of the word comfort to these foods implies there is a relationship between comfort and food that may not exist.”
Comfort food usually is defined as food that gives distinctive pleasure. Women often choose sweets. Men often select heartier, savory items, but there are many exceptions.
The Minnesota research was funded by NASA, in hopes of improving the mood of astronauts on space missions.
Traci Mann, a psychology professor and the study’s lead researcher, wanted to know whether giving people “comfort food” would boost their mood, a finding that might help astronauts during a voyage to Mars.
For the study, 100 subjects were asked to pick three foods that would make them feel better. The subjects also identified foods they liked but that they thought would not affect their mood.
Then, to induce feelings of anger, sadness and anxiety, researchers compiled 18 minutes of scenes from feel-bad movies such as Sophie’s Choice, Armageddon and The Hurt Locker. After watching the videos, the subjects took a mood questionnaire. They generally reported feeling awful.
Next, some subjects were served triple-portion-sized helpings of a comfort food. Others were given a food they liked but didn’t consider a mood booster (typically almonds, cashews or popcorn), and some were given the neutrally rated granola bar. Some weren’t given any food.
Over the many weeks that the trial was underway, the lab exuded intoxicating aromas, as researchers made scrupulous efforts to ply subjects with their chosen comfort food. Researchers baked brownies, heated apple pies and topped them with ice cream and prepared macaroni and cheese.
The food was distributed under the guise of thanking subjects for their time.
Three minutes later, the subjects took another mood questionnaire. While they all felt better, there was no appreciable difference among the groups who ate comfort food, other foods or no food at all.
Although research has shown that eating food high in fat, sugar or salt activates the brain’s reward system, Nicole M. Avena, a neuroscientist and assistant professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who writes about eating disorders, said in an email that the Minnesota study suggested that such neural response might not translate into measurable mood changes.
Avena said it would be interesting to see whether these results would hold up in studies of subjects who are obese or regularly eat comfort foods.
Elissa Epel, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco, noted that there is a lot of individuality in how people are conditioned to respond to pleasing foods. But even if the food helps with mood, “the effect is transient.”