Talking Point: Comfort Food
Created | Updated Oct 21, 2008
Let us set the scene: it's a winter's evening, it's Friday, you're tired, it was a hard week at work. The curtains are drawn, it's warm and toasty inside, rain thrumming on the windows outdoors, wind a-gusting. You're curled up on the sofa, the TV's on, and you're hungry. Mmmmm... this is a comfort food situation, is it not? Oh comfort food, how we love thee and your warming, gelantinous, hydrogenated fatinous1 delights!
But you have to get it right. What is the perfect comfort food? What will it take to really hit the spot?
What is your all-time number one favourite comfort food?
Do you have a ritual, a bit of scene-setting to get the preparation just right, to maximise the comfort zone?
Is comfort food, by definition, unhealthy food? Or can it be healthy? Can you curl up on a sofa and munch on a raw carrot?
Is your comfort food the type you get delivered from a take-away restaurant? Do you like the build-up, the anticipation of waiting for the pizza delivery man to ring the bell?
Is your comfort food a bit more emotional, connected to a memory: puddings your mother made; food from a foreign land?
Do like to cook your comfort food? Is it a Sunday lunch sort-of affair?
Is comfort food something you like to eat on your own or can it be a shared experience?
Do you have absolutely no need for any form of pathetic so-called 'comfort' food, seeing instead food as simply necessary fuel for optimum physiological performance?