Comfort Food: A Cultural Perspective
Momma’s cooking always made everyone smile. For special occasions like Christmas or a family gathering, usually in the winter, she would make the all encompassing, brilliant, warm, flavorful, must be consumed in large quantities, and ever filling: gumbo. A roux based brown broth filled with chicken, sausage, and celery and served over rice. Steam rises up and reaches your nostrils. You breath in the first smell of the savory stew and life is good, warm, and comfortable. Gumbo for the southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana area is known as comfort food. Everyone from the area has a certain taste in their mouth when you say gumbo. It could be mom’s, grandma’s, aunt’s, friend’s, or whoever you connect with on a deep and personal level. Food is what connects us as people, first because of its necessity, and second because of its sociability. But why is comfort food so comforting? Is it a psychological phenomenon, as some suggest? Or is it a cultural one, formed by history? What does comfort food look like around the world? We all, at our core, are curious about food. We as Americans are sometimes isolated from culinary exploration but I believe it is crucial to eat a cultures food in order to better understand their way of life. For Japanese sushi, the intricate way the chef folds and places ingredients and wraps it in seaweed, with grace and precision, allows the non-Japanese to realize they are a people of routine, brilliance, and constantly striving for perfection. For the people of India, their colorful and spicy dishes that they prepare by the barrel to sell to the hungry workers reflect their spirituality and care for the common person. Food is the common denominator between cultures, the bonding agent between different people. One my not be able to speak Hungarian, but the universal “mmmm” when eating goulash is understood without translation. So what is a comfort food? What does it mean? Where do they come from? I aim to partly satisfy your curiosity, but hopeful exacerbate your appetite.
Psychology Today acknowledges 5 criteria to defining a comfort food. Psychology suggests that the brain activates the same way with comfort food as with drug addiction. For some reason there is within our brains a measure on how comfortable the food is, depending on the dish’s ability to fill us up and to keep us coming back. The five criteria are: 1. Feel good. It gives you a pleasurable experience and activates your brain in certain ways to give you that experience. 2. Emotional Medication. Comfort food should give the brain a coping mechanism and ultimately will help boost happiness and emotional stability. 3. The Need to Belong. Comfort food is meant to be shared amongst a group. The group mentality will help emotional health and ultimately give the eater a sense of satisfaction and purpose. 4. Nostalgia. Every comfort food should have a foundation in childhood, where mother cooks something delicious and one remembers fondly the days of youth. 5. Special Occasion. Comfort food is most notably served around a holiday or certain family tradition. Thanksgiving turkey’s, Easter barbecue, Christmas ham (for me and my family, gumbo), and other such holidays provide cultures around the world an opportunity to gather as a family, body of believers, or country around a meal. These psychological perspectives require American comfort food to be limited. In the American mindset, these criteria lead to a plethora of foods depending on location, but often times it involves sugar, grease, and a whole lot of cheese. If we as Americans think of these criteria and what food meets them, we come up with (at least in my area): Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, Banana Pudding, Chili, Ice Cream, etc. You may add or subtract as you please but ultimately, these foods are psychologically embedded in the American mind as something comfortable. Psychologists say that comfort food is comfortable because of the emotional “medication” it provides when people are under stress, depressed, or insecure. Certain foods, like cheese, release dopamine in the brain which causes drug-like pleasure, but also deep addiction. Comfort food in America started as a term that refers to what people eat to feel better, often something sugary and unhealthy. Some say the mixture of the depressing psychological climate of modern America along with the wide availability of unhealthy “feel good” foods is a cause of American obesity today, which is a subject that requires a blogpost of its own. Other psychologists, such as the ones that wrote a brilliant thesis on the subject, suggest that the reason comfort food is comfortable is not only in the chemical releases of the brain, but also the burning human desire to socialize. They conducted experiments on people that identify with being “securely attached”, meaning they thrive on positive relational support. These people ended up rating comfort foods based on their “social utility” or how good the food is at bringing people together and fulfill the securely attached people’s desire to belong. These comfort foods, in fact, would decrease obesity because of the limited amount of food, the preoccupation with socializing, and the already fulfilled desire of relationships, leading to less eating. During another experiment, the research suggests that people reach for the comfort food, rather than healthier alternatives, with the increasing feeling of isolation. So it seems the actual psychological research suggests that the two over-arching reasons comfort food is comforting is the social implications and the emotional medication.
Aside from the psychological perspectives, there are other ideas answering the question, “where does comfort food come from?”. There is what I like to call the economic perspective, where comfort food is anything that fills you up while being cheap and accessible. Where I’m from, foods like red beans and rice are inexpensive but can feed a family for a day or two. It is food that literally provides the comfort and security during a time of economic concern. After economic strain, there is a sense of nostalgia and remembrance when returning to the foods we eat during those difficult times. According to the Institute for Human Rights, not only is comfort food a part of individual nostalgia, but it is ingrained in the history and culture. Every country you may travel to, there is a specific dish that represents the culture and comfort of the area. I personally believe it’s important to dive into these foods to truly understand a people. For England, pub food is a valuable staple in their diet. Bangers and mash, meat pies, and fish and chips are all comfort food because in the history of the country, it has providing community, solace, and security for the common man of England. There is a wonderful and specific feeling that comes when eating a dish that is historically significant. In my opinion (and I will take this opinion to the grave), the potato is the most impactful comfort food in the history of the world. Discovered by Portuguese colonialists in the early 16th century, they brought it back to Europe and within a century, Europe was repopulated after the terrors of the Black Plague a few centuries earlier. To this day, the potato is a vital part of many European dishes. In the 19th century when a fungus began killing potato crops in Ireland, nearly a million people died from starvation. Because the potato is cheap, can grow anywhere, and is filling, it has a large part of the overall health and diets of the world. In a close second, however, is the ubiquitous grain called rice. There is a rice dish in just about every major culture in the world. The minute a dish becomes served over rice, it instantly becomes more palpable, in the case of curry, and more filling. It is the cheapest carbohydrate in the world, which adds to its availability and utilitarian quality. It has fed every major people group since the dawn of civilization. In a culture’s era of crisis, there are foods that give hope to another day with a full belly, and a tomorrow that may produce another hot meal.
Comfort food is defined by the nostalgia of a nation and the security of its citizens. Whether individual families find comfort in beans and rice, or whole nations gather around a table for cheap and filling meals, comfort food is a staple to any culture that graces this planet. Food has a profound influence on people. It is a gathering agent, providing comfort in numbers. It gives people a reason to come together and have a good time, providing a sense of belonging and purpose, which we desperately need. It is the faithful shepherd calling hungry sheep to its side to walk the plain of life together. Comfort food is a powerful cultural phenomenon that does not need to be overlooked but rather enjoyed. So I urge you, reader, to experiment with different comfort foods around the world. Travel and eat stuff you would not eat at home. The comfort of a nation, city, state, or region is something to be shared not opposed. If something provides someone else solace and security, it may be just as rewarding with you. So I dare you to eat something different. Try the food you would not normally try. Then and only then can you tangibly touch and taste the history of a nation and the pride of its people.
Thanks for reading!
Sources:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201609/5-reasons-why-we-crave-comfort-foods
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/why-comfort-food-comforts/389613/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666315000768?via%3Dihub
https://cas.uab.edu/humanrights/2019/02/25/the-importance-of-comfort-food/