“Stressed” Spelled Backwards Is “Desserts”: Self-Medicating Moods with Foods
“Stressed” Spelled Backwards Is “Desserts”: Self-Medicating Moods with Foods
Conventional wisdom, gift-giving, funerary customs, eating rituals, jokes, sayings, and other traditions often invoke linkages between moods and foods. This chapter considers differences in patterns of comfort food cravings and consumption related to gender, age, and other factors. It also reviews hypotheses about reasons for comfort eating, e.g., sensory properties of food, associations of food with particular people or events, pharmacological constituents of items, and physiological processes of counteracting stress-induced hormones. Perhaps sometimes we eat what we do because of “what’s eating us,” but a combination of influences seems more likely—one in which folklore and popular culture play a significant role that has not been adequately explored.
Keywords: Popular culture, Sensory, Associations, Stress, Physiological
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