Every food culture has certain dishes that people turn to in times of need. And no one food is a comfort food staple right across the world. Here's why.

Instant ramen, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese – if someone asks you to name your comfort foods, you probably don't have to think twice. The phrase, which has been drifting around the food lexicon for decades, seems to evoke indulgences, familiar flavours, and solace in times of sadness. According to at least one writer, Liza Minnelli helped popularise the phrase in a 1970 interview with a newspaper columnist. For her, comfort food was a sumptuous hamburger. A list of comfort foods in the UK includes a full English breakfast and scrambled eggs on toast. The name seems to say it all: food you eat to comfort yourself.

But is that really what we are getting from these usually high-calorie foods? As psychologists and other researchers have worked to define comfort food, they've uncovered some surprising contradictions.

For one thing, it's not even clear that in times of distress, we reach for the familiar. Stacy Wood, a professor of marketing at University of South Carolina, found in a 2010 study that participants who were experiencing more turmoil in their lives were more likely to choose foods they'd never tried before than old standbys. Even though participants themselves said that they thought people with stable lives would be more likely to branch out in new directions, when push came to shove, they didn't follow that rule themselves.

Offered a popular American brand of potato chips or an "exotic" British packet of crisps with flavours like camembert and plum, those with more stability chose the familiar brand. Those without opted for something new. Times of change might actually make us more open to new possibilities, the researchers suggested.

Scientists have also wondered whether the calories in comfort foods might boost mood somehow. There is some evidence that sweet taste can reduce markers of stress in rats. And in human babies, sugar water is thought to provide some amount of pain relief. But many comfort foods, of course, aren't sweet. In fact, one poll found that pizza beat all other contenders for the title of America's favourite comfort food.

What's more, one study that surveyed around 1,400 people in North America found that more men reported eating comfort foods as a kind of celebration – in other words, when they were in a good mood – while women tended to report eating comfort foods in a low mood. Eating comfort foods tended to make them feel guilty, not happy.

Perhaps comfort foods are delivering something more subtle than cheeriness. In some situations, they may, some researchers propose, help us feel a sense of belonging. In an article entitled "Chicken Soup Really Is Good for the Soul", researchers found that eating comfort foods evoked feelings related to relationships, and for North Americans who had a history of strong, secure connection, eating such foods could protect them from threats to their identity. People without a history of secure connections were not insulated from these blows by food, however. The effect depends on your own past.

Intriguingly, however, another team did not see this same effect in people from Singapore or The Netherlands. Comfort foods had no effect on their feelings of loneliness or belonging. Could comfort food be a concept that only helps people from certain cultures?

Some foods may conjure up a feeling of community or belonging, thanks to their associations with the past (Credit: Arx0nt/Getty Images)
Some foods may conjure up a feeling of community or belonging, thanks to their associations with the past (Credit: Arx0nt/Getty Images)

The context for your ice cream or hot chip binge may actually matter more than anything else. People eat for so many emotional reasons, notes Oxford psychologist Charles Spence, whether they are consuming fish and chips or Brussels sprouts. They eat to keep their good moods, to celebrate, to pass the time. And the food itself is different from culture to culture.

An oft-cited Indian comfort food is khichri, a savoury porridge of lentils and rice, topped with pickles; for some Chinese people, the massive lion's head meatball, a globe of spiced ground pork, scratches that itch. A Syrian might wax lyrical about mujaddara, a lentil and bulgur dish heaped with caramelised onions, and French people might dream of tartiflette, the cheesy, lardon-laden potato casserole. For Swiss people from Canton de Vaud, the hyper-local delicacy of saucisse-aux-choux with leeks and potatoes can summon comfort when it's needed most.

Attempts to classify comfort food as crunchy or soft, easy to eat or pleasingly difficult, have largely failed to find a pattern, even within a given culture. But some clear evidence of people eating comfort food for comfort's sake comes from, of all people, tourists.

Far from home, a little intimidated by the local cuisine, and maybe sick or jet-lagged, people in two major airports in Taiwan were surveyed by researchers. Those travellers who didn't like to try new foods were the happiest as they consumed their comfort food, confirming that at least in some situations, familiar foods do play the role we imagine they do – giving reassurance, a sense of belonging, and a stable anchor, alongside all the calories.

BBC

More about: