REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — For people who are experiencing stress, it seems that comfort food offers the ideal, or perhaps momentary, solution. A new study from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, shows how people should think twice before incorporating “comfort” foods when stressed.
This study conducted on mice found, a combination stress and those comfort foods turn off the brain’s mechanisms to let you know when it’s time to eat enough. This can lead to overindulgence in comfort food choices, as well as weight gain and obesity, which can potentially be a source of more stress.
The affected area of the brain is the lateral habenula, an organ present in mice and humans. Under normal conditions, the area produces mild and unpleasant sensations in the short term from a high-fat diet.
The researchers found that the lateral habenula remained quiescent as usual during a high-fat meal. The mice continued to eat, apparently for pleasure, without feeling full.
After further analysis, the researchers found that the stressed rats consumed twice as much sweet food pellets (or liquid) as the non-stressed rats. It shows that preference for sweet food persists in stressed mice. When the researchers reactivated the lateral habenula using optogenetic light that can control neural activity, the mice stopped overeating.
What is comfort food? Professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), A. Janet Tomiyama says there is no universal definition of comfort food.
“People assume comfort foods are automatically high-fat, high-sugar and high-calorie foods, but no one has tested them systematically,” Tomiyama said. Medical News TodayMonday (12/6/2023).
Lesley Rennis, professor in the Health Science department at Manhattan Community College, says comfort food is a snack that tastes good and makes you feel good. Typically, these comfort foods are dense in calories, rich in sugar and fat, and have nostalgic and sentimental value.
“Sometimes called a very good food, these foods are beneficial and stimulate the release of feel-good hormones like serotonin,” says Rennis
Many studies investigate the psychological appeal of comfort food. Rennis said further studies would add to the information on comfort foods.
“This provides a layer of knowledge about the physiology of stress and its impact on food intake. As with all disease states, there are physiological and psychological contributors,” he said.
Asked about the possibility that the rat study yielded results that would apply to humans, both the study’s lead authors Chi Kin Ip and Tomiyama felt so. “Humans are animals like mice, and studies in non-human animals provide very tight experimental controls that provide valuable information that we can’t get to humans,” said Tomiyama.
Ip explains some of the similarities between humans and animals, such as, the anatomical structure and function of the habenula. Ip said the lateral habenula is a region that plays an important role in regulating emotional responses. He further noted that a molecule identified in research for the behavior of the lateral habenula also exists in humans.
Ip says high-fat foods provide a way to get energy quickly. In modern humans, stress is less relevant to literal survival. “Indulging in comfort food sometimes isn’t a problem,” says Rennis.
On the other hand, Tomiyama explains that higher body weight is highly stigmatized. Tomiyama has spent a decade of research showing that the stigma of weight is stressful and stimulates a biological stress response.
Rennis notes that overindulging in comfort foods in response to stress is akin to drinking the occasional alcohol to cool off. “It’s okay once in a while, but it can cause problems if you overdo it,” he says.
Tomiyama points out that comfort food doesn’t have to be high in sugar, fat, or calories to be comforting. “We train people to feel better after eating fruit,” he said.
2023-06-13 15:06:26
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