Finding Comfort in Food

The past decade shook up many people: terrorist attacks, economic meltdown, energy and water shortages, city-destroying hurricanes, and a host of other things that made people want to pull the covers over their heads and come out when it was all over. So is it any wonder people turned back to the basics on something under their control—their food?

Look at the list of “Top Ten Foods of the Decade” issued by The Food Channel's editors last month. It’s rife with homey items like bacon, cupcakes, sliders and tea, and macaroni-and-cheese and bread pudding topped the group’s list of “Top Ten Recipes of the Decade.”

In times of uncertainty, people are seeking security in the form of food. It’s a well-known fact that our relationship to food is an emotional one, not just in a general nurturing sense evoked by a steaming bowl of chicken soup served to a sick child, but also in the sense that food-related occasions are often tied to positive experiences. Think about it: What could be more fun than a cupcake with a swirl of luscious icing and brightly colored sprinkles?

Certainly one manifestation of this embrace of the familiar is the trend toward natural foods. It hearkens back to a simpler time when we believed the world made sense. While there are legitimate, fact-based gripes against manmade, nutritionally bereft foods becoming a major food group and fad diets that ignore nutritional science, most of the demand is driven by emotion. No scary ingredients with chemical names like dihydroxide monoxide, DHMO, allowed.

GMOs that reduce pesticide use are fearsome things not fit for human consumption because we can imagine all kinds of potential dangers. Technology applied to food is bad, evil and unhealthy. Witness current food sage Michael Pollan’s admonishment: “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” (So that means the sashimi, edamame, avocado and unagi roll, and seaweed salad I had for dinner last night, plus the yogurt I had for breakfast, would be off limits in Grandma’s world. Back to the gravy-laden dumplings and eggs fried in bacon grease for me!)

I’m not advocating replacing homemade roast chicken with irradiated space-food sticks. Food really is more than a mixture of chemicals to the human psyche. One academic study I read even came up with five sources of food emotions: sensory attributes, experienced consequences, anticipated consequences, personal or cultural meanings, and actions of associated agents.

It truly is a scary world out there. But there’s nothing wrong with taking comfort in a frozen “processed” potpie or blue-box mac-n-cheese—or homemade organic ice cream—if that’s your idea of culinary inner peace. But I’m certainly less anxious if I have some assurance that technology is protecting me from the pathogens ubiquitous in our food supply, and that if I don’t chase the deer out of my vegetable patch I might not have those green beans for dinner. There’s really no rational reason to let emotions trump common sense when it comes to food. Except we often do.

   -Lynn A. Kuntz