Comfort Eating? Are you guilty?

by Diana McCollum

What is comfort food? Is it food we love and eat any old time, because we love it, or is it food we eat when we are worried, stressed or feeling sorry for ourselves?

com·fort food

bread pudding

noun

1. food that provides consolation or a feeling of well-being, typically any with a high sugar or other carbohydrate content and associated with childhood or home cooking.
2. 
   

Comfort eating:

 ​eating because you are ​feeling ​worried or ​upset and not because you are ​hungry

I could eat chocolate or cheese cake or pizza anytime it’s put in front of me. But when I’m upset or worried, give me homemade mashed potatoes smothered in butter. Give me bakery made sweet rolls or bread. I'll eat a couple pieces of toast with jam and a cup of tea. Those are foods I normally try to avoid. But when I’m upset, I need my comfort food!

My friend Kathy Coatney wrote a great blog post on stress eating. Check it out.

If you've ever wondered where the term comfort food comes from: 

It appeared in an article in The Atlantic in April 2015 in the 1977 Washington Post magazine article on Southern cooking.

"When the Oxford English Dictionary added a definition for “comfort food” in 1997, it traced the term’s etymology back to a 1977 Washington Post magazine article about Southern cooking: “Along with grits, one of the comfort foods of the South is black-eyed peas.”

So are you a stress eater or comfort food eater? What foods comfort you the most?