Comfort Eating
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
"...how 'bout stopping eating when I'm full up..." (Thank U by Alanis Morissette).
Comfort eating is when you eat simply to fill up the huge void within yourself. You feel an emptiness inside, and try and fill it with food. Traditionally, foods like chocolate and ice cream are 'comfort foods', but sometimes anything will do. You know you are not hungry, but you eat anyway. Whether angry, upset, needing a retreat from the big bad world, or just plain bored, breaking the diet and stuffing your face is a common form of release.
Bridget Jones of Bridget Jones' Diary is a prime example of comfort eating as something most teenage girls and twenty-, thirty-something women do (especially when men are involved), regularly eating the entire contents of her fridge and cupboards when upset.
Comfort eating probably stems from good old caveman days. When feeling ill or when the depression of winter was coming on, the best idea was probably to put on as much weight as possible. High-fat foods taste, to the human taste buds, better than low fat foods due to evolution, so blame that.
Comfort eating is when you eat simply to fill up the huge void within yourself. You feel an emptiness inside, and try and fill it with food. Traditionally, foods like chocolate and ice cream are 'comfort foods', but sometimes anything will do. You know you are not hungry, but you eat anyway. Whether angry, upset, needing a retreat from the big bad world, or just plain bored, breaking the diet and stuffing your face is a common form of release.
Bridget Jones of Bridget Jones' Diary is a prime example of comfort eating as something most teenage girls and twenty-, thirty-something women do (especially when men are involved), regularly eating the entire contents of her fridge and cupboards when upset.
Comfort eating probably stems from good old caveman days. When feeling ill or when the depression of winter was coming on, the best idea was probably to put on as much weight as possible. High-fat foods taste, to the human taste buds, better than low fat foods due to evolution, so blame that.
