14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusions of a new scientific study, it would appear that people who want to calm down their emotions on occasions have found the perfect way to do so. Comfort foods are the method of choice used by those who want to get rid of stress, or simply relax at the end of the day.
The dangerous thing about comfort foods is that, while they do alleviate sadness and stress, they are also generally not what you would call healthy. Most often, people indulge in meatloaf, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese even if they know for sure these foods are bad for their arteries.
Interestingly, this habit may also be a social norm, say investigators from the University of Buffalo, in the sense that people unconsciously perceive this habit as being a social surrogate.
This concept refers to things that make the people who experience them feel like they belong in a group or society. A large proportion of the general population spends its entire life looking for this feeling of inclusion, and they don't even know it.
“For me personally, food has always been big in my family,” explains UB graduate student Jordan Troisi, who co-authored the new investigation with Shira Gabriel, PhD. The team mostly focused its attention on social surrogates, PsychCentral reports.
The two looked for example at methods people use to counteract the effects of loneliness. Watching TV or mementos of loved ones is a favorite approach. Others prefer to build virtual relationships with various people online or in showbiz, whereas others still take refuge in their computers.
In the experiments conducted at UB, half of a group of test subjects was asked to write about a fight they recently had with a close one (in order to make them feel lonely), while the other half wrote a neutral composition.
After this stage, experts asked people from both groups to write either about a comfort food or about a new food. Before the study even began, the scientists measured just how secure each of the participants felt about their interpersonal relationships.
When the subjects finished writing, experts applied a questionnaire to measure loneliness. It was found that those who were more secure in their relationships were the most likely write about a comfort food in order to alleviate their feeling of loneliness.
“What we found is that people have the capacity to create a comfort food for themselves by having it be something that’s consistently associated with their close others,” Troisi explains.
“Throughout everyone’s daily lives they experience stress, often associated with our connections with others. This is sort of a ready-made easy resource for remedying a sense of loneliness,” the graduate student adds.
“It seems like it almost doesn’t take very much to regain those feelings and feel like we’re connected with others,” Troisi concludes.