Why We Never Outgrow

Comfort Food

Quick Summary

There's a reason you crave a roasted bhutta (with lime), a cup of tea, or even a slice of greasy pizza or burger when you're not having a great day. Most of these are comfort food, tied to memory, the good kind. And sampling the same dish or beverage just about does away with any worries or woes, right? But is it just the magic of good food, or is there a reason why only specific items become our comfort food? What’s exactly at play here?

Deep Dive

Comfort food occupies a peculiar space in the human psyche. It operates differently from the regular food your body processes for nutrition and sustenance. The mind, or as one says, the heart, is very different; it remembers the comfort food pretty well. It’s embedded in memory and social cues that, to a large degree, become inseparable from one's identity. Decades might pass, continents might separate a person from their childhood home, yet the craving for specific dishes persists with remarkable intensity. Because comfort food isn’t about nutrition alone, but also about nostalgia. 

The Markers of Food Memory

Comfort food triggers happy memories. Even if the mind can’t remember the exact moment, the body remembers the feel. How? To answer this, one needs to focus on the olfactory senses, i.e the sense of smell and taste. Zooming in on the olfactory bulb, which processes smell, it has direct connections to the brain’s memory and emotion centres, creating what researchers term ‘odour-evoked nostalgia’. This explains why the scent of onions sautéing, roasted mssalas or the heady smell of ghee melting in a pan, can summon specific memories with startling clarity. You might associate them with the softness of your grandmother's sari, light filtering through a rusty window, and the particular cadence of your mother's voice.

The Dopamine Connection

The brain's reward system doesn't distinguish between genuine nourishment and emotional satisfaction. At the cost of sounding a little risque, appetising dishes activate the same brain regions associated with pleasure and reward that become active during drug addiction. Comfort foods don't really create dependency – they're just fulfilling fundamental human needs for pleasure, safety, and connection through the most accessible means. 

The key distinction lies in consciousness. This means the craving isn't purely biological – it's the psyche seeking connection through the most immediate route available. During times of physical separation, whether due to migration, urban relocation, or global circumstances that restrict movement, comfort foods become more than sustenance. They become communion with absent loved ones, conversations across distance, and tangible proof that one remains tethered to origins.

Cultural Coding and Memory

Traditional comfort foods like idlis and dal represent more than just a means of nourishment – they carry forward generational practices, requiring specialised equipment and techniques that parents choose to maintain despite modern convenience. The older you get, the more you will gravitate towards these comfort spots as well. When a busy parent or ageing grandparent takes time to prepare any dish at all, it strikes a chord within the child. And that chord, or rather connection, remains strong even as an adult even when there is no standard recipe to follow. 

For most items, especially universal dishes like dal fry or say biryani, everyone will say their family has the best recipe. This apparent contradiction reveals how the brain sees comfort food. It's simultaneously universal and intensely personal. Everyone understands the concept of soul-satisfying food, but the specific preparation, or even, dishes that provide that satisfaction, vary.

The Ritualic Aspect

From feeding that first morsel to a newborn to elaborate wedding preparations, food has always been a significant part of major life events and transitions. And a way to pass on cultural heritage across generations. These ritualised eating experiences create particularly strong memory associations because they link food with major emotional moments, across generations.

The way food is consumed also impacts the memory. Like eating with hands, spoons or even sitting down and sharing a meal engages the senses to create richer, more vivid memories. You remember the specific details too, like how one needs to pinch out small portions of rice from a piping hot mound of mata rice in Onam Sadya to eating khichuri bhog during Durga Puja, where parents tend to caution their kids to wait till the rice cools a bit or spread it around.

The Impossibility of Replication

Anyone who has attempted to recreate a beloved family recipe discovers a frustrating truth – the dish never tastes quite right. You can use the same rice, dal or even spices that your parent or grandparent got, and even master the techniques and timing, yet something still feels ‘missing’. It’s a psychological trick, more than anything else. For example, someone else making kheer, payesh or payasam on special occasions like birthdays, instead of the mother of the kid.

This isn't a failure of skill or memory. It's the recognition that comfort food contains ingredients that cannot be measured, like the memories and person attached to it. As adults, perhaps what the brain wants more than ever is the feeling of security that came from being a child with no responsibilities beyond appreciating the meal. This intensifies comfort food's appeal. 

The Double Edge of Comfort Food

With talks of comfort food comes the issue of emotional eating, which becomes problematic when eating the usual comfort food, especially junk food, transforms into a routine stress response rather than occasional solace. The same neurological mechanisms that make comfort foods psychologically beneficial can, when activated too frequently, create patterns that undermine well-being. The office worker who responds to every deadline with a heap of pakoras, the student who treats every exam anxiety with the midnight instant noodles – these patterns indicate that food has shifted from comfort to a coping mechanism.

The solution isn't eliminating comfort foods; attempting to do so would mean severing connections to memory, culture, and pleasure that provide genuine psychological sustenance. Rather, it requires developing awareness about when food serves emotional needs versus when it masks problems requiring different interventions. Taking a slice of pizza can bring positivity on a gloomy day and remind someone of loved ones, but this shouldn't become the only stress treatment method.

Why Comfort Food Remains Undefeated

Comfort food persists because it addresses needs that remain constant across lifespans – the need for security, connection, pleasure, and meaning. These needs don't disappear with age; if anything, they intensify as life grows more complex, geographical and emotional distances expand, and the number of people who share one's food memories dwindles.