The Appeal of Comfort Food Explained

By Catering Staff | May 15, 2017

Who says that comfort food can only be found in home-cooked meals? You will be surprised, especially when you look at a list of Black Bear Diner catering prices, to know that a restaurant chain offers home-style, old-fashioned comfort foods!  

But what makes comfort food so enduring even with culinary trends and cultural changes?  Let’s take a look at its appeal so that we may better understand our emotional attachment to it.  

High in Nostalgic Value

The term “comfort food” was first mentioned in a Palm Beach Post article about the way many adults deal with severe emotional stress. According to its author, comfort food is linked with childhood especially its feelings of security, as experienced when one enjoys mother’s chicken soup or poached egg. Basically, the consumption of comfort food becomes an effective coping mechanism against negative emotions, such as sadness.  

The emphasis here is nostalgia, the feeling of being transported to the good old days of childhood innocence. When you eat your own version of comfort food, you feel refreshed, reenergized and ready to take on the cares of the world. Think of the way that your mother – or anybody in your family, for that matter – provided comfort by preparing your favorite meal or snack and you get the idea.  

Each to His Own

Since comfort food is closely linked to nostalgia, it’s specific to an individual. Since each individual also belongs to a certain culture, it also differs between cultures. Each to his own, indeed!

But there are common comfort foods that individuals share with others although the specific appearance, flavors and textures will likely be different. Even the specific feelings that eating comfort food evoke will be different between individuals, too.

Among Americans, the comfort foods include pizza on a rainy day, chocolate in whatever form it may take from ice cream to cakes and bars, ice cream in favorite flavors, chips, and mac ‘n cheese. Other foods includes steak, popcorn, hamburgers, pasta and even Mexican food.

The main appeal of comfort foods lie in their predictability. In a world where everything else appears to change, there’s a comforting feeling in the knowledge that many things stay the same – and that’s true for comfort food.  The predictability of knowing what the food is going to taste like and what emotions it will evoke is just priceless!  

Plus, there’s also the food anxiety we feel every time a new food trend, fusion, or revolution comes along. We just want to skip on the food anxiety and settle for food predictability, especially when we’re feeling out of sorts.