The next time you want comfort food near you, you may actually want something else.
Time reports of a recent study published in the Appetite journal that suggests that people crave for comfort food when they’re feeling lonesome.
Jordan Triosi, an assistant professor of psychology at Sewanee, The University of the South, and his team have found that people with secure and stable relationships crave for these homey foods not simply for the taste, but for how the activity soothes and, well, comforts.
“It’s not just that ice cream, for instance, is really tasty. It’s that someone has developed a really significant meaning behind the idea of ice cream due to their relationships with others, and that’s what is triggering this effect,” Jordan says.
Feelings of being isolated apparently predict how somebody might enjoy the taste of certain comfort foods. In one point of the study, the researchers had students eat potato chips and evaluate how they taste after reliving a bad fight with someone close to them. In another, they find students eating more of their desired comfort food on a day they feel least perky and positive.
The result? Tastier comfort food in general—and that’s not because of how it’s cooked. People who had better tight-knit relationships find comfort food a lot yummier because it brings them back to fond memories, unlike people who had distant relationships who hardly have fond memories to relate to.
“The team discovered that students who had stronger, more positive relationships in their lives thought the comfort food was tastier than the students who didn’t have as many positive relationships,” reports The Smithsonian.
This is not the first time comfort food had a good rep of being the friend you needed. Not only does it improve moods, but it’s also “autobiographically relevant” when you need to remember a forgotten memory.
Photo courtesy of Naples Daily News