Feelings for Food or Food for Feelings?

Lets say you just broke up with your significant other and are all geared up for a lonely night in. Chances are you have all the essentials: a couch, the TV, a sad movie, and most importantly about a gallon of ice cream or (insert other junk food here) traveling toward your face. This scene, all to familiar to many teenage girls (and most likely some guys as well), is a classic representation of the relationship between emotions and diet. Whats often written off with such humorous examples of emotional eating though, is the truth that the tie between feelings and food is a prominent aspect of our lives. Think about it, we all have generally scheduled times that we eat throughout the day, often with the same people. Even more important are the specific foods we eat for holidays and at certain times of the year. Now if you were to eat pasta for breakfast or omelets for thanksgiving things probably wouldn't seem right. Of course they wouldn't! We all invest feelings of comfort and nostalgia in different foods and so when we consume them they actually evoke certain emotions. This is what I call having feelings for food. That is, you feel a certain way about the food it's self even before you eat it. You know you like it's taste, and everything you have associated it with.

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Food can also make us feel certain ways not only by how we value them, but because of the way they interact with the body when digested. While there are countless phytochemicals, pigments, and other compounds found in food that interact with the body, science is far from understanding the particulars of their complex effects. Perhaps one of the most researched and documented food substances is sugar. This simple form of carbohydrate has many adverse effects on the body and is most noted for it's link to obesity and type 2 diabetes. Sugar, however, is also a perfect example of the way certain foods can change our emotions once consumed. Consuming sugar stimulates the production of several chemicals in the body including endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine that promote relaxed or happy feelings . These and similar chemicals are surprisingly also known to be produced in the body's response to drugs such as heroin or morphine.(1) While sugar (or any food for that matter) doesn't even come close to the harmful effects of hard drugs it is still important to understand that in some circumstances they can exhibit addictive properties. It's not uncommon for us to seek out a feel good fix when we're feeling down. Like the heartbroken teen with ice cream, sugar can sometimes give us a little lift when we need it. It's for the same reason that people faced with extreme amounts of stress in their personal lives and work often fall on drugs and alcohol addition in order to ease their everyday hardships. When we eat foods because they give us a certain feeling despite our knowledge of their potentially negative effects, we are consuming food for feelings. That is, we are focussing on how we want to feel rather than how we want to nourish our bodies. 

The way we feel about what we eat and the way that food in turn makes us feel can be a hard concept to grasp. When we want to eat is is often difficult to tell if we are being effected by hunger (the need for nutrients) or appetite (craving a specific food or nutrient like sugar). When you have feelings for a food you know it's what you want to eat; you can think about it and know it fits your diet and the occasion. On the other hand eating food for feelings generally happens as more of an impulse. You disregard the nutritional and meaningful aspects and go for the most intense flavor and subsequent feeling you can find. Its not always easy to make "feeling for food" choices but in doing so it becomes much easier to lead a healthy, balanced life through a better regulated diet. The "feeling for food" approach is essentially a way of think about food choices before eating in order to eat better and do away with any after meal guilt. Some ways to start using this approach in your diet include planning out meals before hand, keeping constant foods in your daily intake such as eating a salad with lunch everyday, or even simply eating slower to give yourself time to think about what your consuming. Hey it can't hurt, next time you sit down for a meal ask yourself it you have feelings for the food your eating or if your eating it for a feeling instead.  

What foods do your feel best about?

Sources:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction