Blogpost 4: Explanations

Well, according to wikipedia, comfort food maybe consumed to positively emotions, to relieve negative psychological effects or to increase positive feelings. Hmm,  in my previous blog posts, I did mentioned different aspects why comfort food are comforting, or why people seek for these sweet fattening food every time their feeling happy or depress. But, just like other things, does comfort food has side effects?

Now, I'll be discussing the different side effects of comfort food, both negative and positive.

After reading articles about comfort food, I found these articles tackling the mental side effects of comfort food to humans. One article entitled "COMFORT FOOD FOR YOUR BRAIN" by Mark Hyman, his article was about the different diseases or illnesses a brain could have, he mentioned that body and mind are connected system and with the imbalances it may cause brain disorders. He did mention that eating nutritious food may help someone to become mentally healthy.

"In fact, when it comes to dealing with anxiety, moodiness, depression and memory problems, certain healthy foods — including a wide array of fats, proteins, carbs and special nutrients — help heal and comfort your brain in ways that no drug or other intervention can. And chances are good that you could benefit from eating a whole lot more of these foods more often," Mark said.

The quotation above simply means that comfort food is good for our brain. With food that have essential fats such as the omega-3 fats, which helps the brain and cells healthy (low omega-3 fats results to depression to anxiety or worst dementia); food with protein and amino acid that helps our brain to work properly and  away from being unfocused and tired; Carbohydrates, food such as vegetables, beans whole grain and more, prevents high blood sugar and insulin, which are toxic to the brain; and lastly, of course food must have vitamins for strong healthy mind.

Nevertheless, I read an article "New Research in Comfort Eating" by Susan Albers, saying that it is true that comfort food gives different positive outcome to people. She mentioned that it is possible that the cause of food being comforting was because of the memories and experiences (which was also mentioned in my previous blog). Yet, she tackled about a research where a saturated fat solution (in exchage of real food)  was being injected to the   respondents, the result was just the same with respondents who really did eat actual food.

According to Susan, "Why does this study matter?  Perhaps it suggests that at the moment your brain is locked into this equation:  Feel Bad + Comfort Food=Feel Better.  If you continually pair feeling bad with food over and over again, it is likely that you will strengthen this connection in your brain.  Also, eating for comfort on a very stressful day begins generalizing to sort of stressful days to any minor bits of stress etc."

The quotation above means that we are locked up with the thinking of comfort food will make us better, and lessen stress. Yet, if this thinking will be used a lot of time, to the point that eating these kinds of food become your habit will make you stress, for the reasons that you are guilty because you ate a lot, or regretting mindless eating and gained weight.

This article reminds me the saying that i always remember, too much of something is not good.