Curiosity about the term «Comfort food»

Foods taken into the body have physical, as well as psychological and emotional effects. Researchers identified the central role of food in individuals’ lives also as an emotional «object», describing the association with several emotions (e.g., anger, anxiety, caring, disappointment, disgust, frustration, happiness, love, nostalgia).
Daily life in the modern world, with its concomitant stress, psychological discomfort, and personal disconnection from community, has given rise to the need to engage in self-help behaviors to feel better. While selecting particular foods for comfort may appear to be a highly personal choice, it is deeply embedded within larger social and cultural systems exacerbated by media and advertisers.

While people have always used food to comfort theirselves, only within the past decade has the notion of comfort foods begun appearing regularly in popular magazines, television, literature, and advertising. The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary added comfort food to its list of 1997 entries.

Oxford English Dictionary online definition:
“food that comforts or affords solace; hence, any food (frequently with a high sugar or carbohydrate content) that is associated with childhood or with home cooking.”

Locher et al. 2005¹ dealt with Comfort Foods term conducting a study to show comfort food role during periods of stress and sadness in a sample of students. Here you will find some interesting details of this article and a list of comfort foods keywords.