Comfort me, please

I realized when I went out to dinner last night that I forgot a category in my brief run-down of the various technologies of health: Comfort Eating.

I'd been having a pretty bad week (a bad month, actually), so when my friend Chloe came to pick me up for our weekly Wednesday night dinner, she suggested that we go to my favorite restaurant, the Broadway Bar and Grill, a place famous for their comfort food. On our walk to the bus stop, I found a 20-dollar bill - a whole 20! - staring up at me from the pavement. So I picked it up and looked around to see if anyone had dropped it. But there was no one around us who had just crossed that section of sidewalk. Chloe and I decided that it was a sign from the heavens, and decided then and there to spend the money on fancy drinks we wouldn't have otherwise been able to buy. And thus the evening went from one of comfort food to one of comfort food and drink... a dionysian feast, if you will.

So what did this comfort-food feast consist of? Actually, we were very true to the typical comforting fare. Chloe and I split a bowl of the house soup, which is a tremendously creamy, rich, delicious blend of chicken, red beans, broccoli, and cheese. After allowing a few cocktails to comfort us further, we indulged in greasy goodness: Chloe had the breakfast scramble, and I had fried chicken with mashed potatoes and sauteed vegetables. And it was terrific - so delicious that I stuffed myself long after I was full. And of course then I felt guilty for eating so much of such a fattening food - but still terribly satisfied by the taste and feeling that lingered. And this led me to ask, why is it that certain foods are commonly identified as "comfort food?"

When I think of comfort food, I typically think of carby, starchy, fatty, sugary, greasy yummy food. Most people tend to agree. Sure, there are exceptions - certain people might really find chicken broth and celery sticks comforting. I'm sure there's someone out there who feels that way, and it's likely because there is some sort of childhood link or conditioned response that involves that particular food item. Many scientists think that psychological association is the main operator behind Comfort Food. And I'm sure that they're (at least partially) right - foods from childhood are familiar, and the familiar is comforting.

There's also the issue of conditioned response. I know that for me, cookies and milk are a special sort of comfort food. When I had bad dreams when I was little, I would go wake my mother up. She would put on her robe and slippers and lead me out to the kitchen, where she would pour two glasses of milk and put out a plate of cookies, and she would ask me about my dream. After perhaps twenty minutes I was calm, I had begun to realize that the dream was not real, and I would become drowsy because of the milk. So Mom would put the dishes in the sink and tuck me back into bed, and my bad dream was forgotten. So even now, I have cookies and milk when I have difficulty sleeping - it is one of my comfort foods because I have been conditioned to crave it.

However, it is puzzling that people have so many comfort foods in common. Why is it that almost everyone identifies mashed potatoes as a comfort food? Is it because everyone has a personal childhood association with the mutilated tuber? Or is it that greasy, sugary, fatty, starchy foods are inherently more comforting?

Science has several theories. In his article Comfort Food and You, David Lin briefly discusses the possible explanations of comfort foods' physical effects on the body. One of the most popular is that the consumption of carbohydrates increases the levels of serotonin (the 'happiness' neurotransmitter) in the brain. Others suggest that fatty foods register feelings of fullness and satiety more quickly than other foods, and that this, combined with the fat itself, produce an analgesic effect on the eater. Still others claim that it is simply the oral palatability of fatty and sugary foods that we respond to.

Honestly? I think that most of the comforting effects of Comfort Food spring from psychological associations. The fact that you are consuming a food that it almost universally recognized as Comfort Food would likely cause you to perceive a change in mood. But regardless, I am glad that these foods exist to quell the negativity of the week, and I'm sure next week I will curse them for what they have done to my waistline.

Why am I eating?*

"Technologies of health" sounds like a referent to medical science or a vitamin company. But in the article Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam: Explorations at the Intersection of Consumption and Resistance, Carolyn Rouse and Janet Hoskins explore "technologies of health." Specifically, they look at the ways that African-American Sunni Muslims employ various technologies of health in order to render certain things taboo. That is, they eat. They eat, and they do not eat, and they cook and prepare and taste and share food, and in doing so, they set up a system, something Foucault calls an "authoring [of] novel subversive practices and desires." I'll simplify it incredibly and say that people go on diets, whether they recognize it as a structured program or not, and thereby create a lens through with to see the world of food - generally dividing things into "good" and "bad."

In class we began to tease apart this idea by sharing from our own experiences. Several girls in class admitted to past tendancies to limit food intake in order to achieve a certain body type - that of a ballerina. And we began to separate food consumption into several categories: hunger eating, pleasure eating, zombie eating, social eating, and I'll throw in another category that I'll call obligatory eating.

• Hunger Eating: When you eat because you're genuinely hungry - when your stomach is growling and you feel weak and all of your hunger signals become apparent. Oddly enough, we (and I'm generalizing about much of the Western world now) almost never eat out of hunger. I have a hunch that very few people are at all in touch with their hunger mechanism - we've forgotten what it is to be hungry, because we almost always eat to satisfy some other need, never allowing ourselves to reach the point of hunger. Only those who do not have the means to do this, whose food supplies are not enough to meet their need, likely know what hunger is.
• Pleasure Eating: the convivial, enjoyable, drink some wine, nibble some food, drizzle some sauce, linger three hours over lunch kind of eating. Not that this is the only version of pleasure eating. I'm sure some people get pleasure out of a much less french-style situation than the one I've painted here. But the point is that pleasure-eaters are not eating because they need the nutrients. They eat to please their senses, to enjoy the taste, smell, and sight of the food.
• Zombie Eating: eating out of boredom. This is what my Mom always yelled at me for: wandering around the house with nothing to do, inevitably my search for entertainment by standing in front of the refrigerator, cold air on my face. Zombie eaters are almost in a trance, grabbing at any sort of food (though preferably something carb-y) to pass the time.
• Social Eating: consuming food as part of a social activity. Now this overlaps a lot with the other categories, for our eating is almost always social. But social eating is what causes us to eat much of the time. Honestly, it would probably be a lot easier to lose weight if I knew I could see my friends and not share a meal. But social events always seem to involve food - lunch, dinner, coffee, drinks, snacks, baking, etc. I don't know if my friends and I are even capeable of meeting and not eating...
• Obligatory Eating: this is something we didn't cover in class, but something that I think a lot of people have experienced at one time or another. Obligatory eating happens whenever you realize that you do not want food, but are somehow pressured into eating it anyway. This happens a lot to little kids: "Clean your plate! There are starving people in China!" You eat because you don't want to waste food. You eat because you don't want to seem disrespectful. You eat the fattening donut because your friend ordered one, too. You eat the ice cream because Mom bought it. You order a coffee because you have a 20 minute break. Like social eating, obligatory eating overlaps a lot with other categories.

So what is the point of all of this? I'm not sure. But simply seeing how complicated our eating habits are is amazing - and definitely makes me feel less silly about calling it a "technology of eating."