why is “comfort” food comforting and also usually bad for us?
In: Biology
When we eat we usually make choices on what to eat based on what we “should” be doing, trying to watch our calories, or our salt intake, or sugar, etc… This is good to do, obviously, but makes us constantly have to compromise between what we wish we could be doing and what reality demands of us. When we are upset or going through a struggle mentally it can be soothing to slip into a mindset of disregarding reality and just doing eating what we truly want to eat, just momentarily putting aside the struggles of reality and the compromises we are always shouldering.
If you just had a bad breakup or a bad day at work, then just enjoy that giant pile of macaroni and cheese even though it’s full of calories. It doesn’t matter right now. Just take care of yourself.
Because comfort food usually contains either fat, sugar, or salt. All of which our bodies are hardwired to crave because they’re either high energy or a critical nutrient.
The problem is, we’re not primitive humans living meal-to-meal anymore, and fatty/sugary/salty foods aren’t the rare treat they are in nature.
Our modern sedentary lifestyle makes these foods disproportionately unhealthy to us since we can and often do consume them in bulk and frequently. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s that they’re bad in the amounts we often consume them in.
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