My mother is a great cook, and an adventurous one. Throughout my childhood, she made flan and soufflé and once, memorably, a dish called “pungent fish balls.” But she was also busy and often didn’t have time to cook from scratch, and I wonder sometimes about my longing for small memories of her culinary non-grandeur. Mac and cheese from a box, for instance, or “cheese toast” for lunch: wheat bread in the toaster oven with cheddar cheese and paprika. I can find all the necessary ingredients for this particular snack within 50 feet of my apartment, but I have never once made it for myself. I never really want cheese toast, it turns out. Cheese and bread tastes like cheese and bread. So why is it that I’ll still eat it in a heartbeat if my mom makes it?
To investigate, I talked to Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder and neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, about the ways mom’s cooking shapes our memories of childhood and our preferences as adults.
Why is our mothers’ cooking so special to us?
It’s a matter of olfactory evoked nostalgia. We looked at 989 people from 45 states and 39 countries, and we found the number-one odor that made people nostalgic for their childhood was baked goods; the smell of mom’s baking.
But what if your mom never baked?
The memories we have are not true memories. When we have a memory, it’s really a compilation. In our culture, we perceive the maternal influence as being the comforter, the one who bakes apple pie, and we come to associate that with our mother, even if it’s through false or perceived memories. My best guess would be that we do it because that’s the memory that we want to have.
So our memories of our childhood could have nothing to do with the things we actually experienced as children?
That’s right. It could be things that we learned to associate with childhood. There is often a very wide variation between what you recall and what actually happened. We think of memories as being a stable thing, but memory fluctuates, depending upon our immediate past experience, our emotional affect at the time, and our expectation. Even if our mothers weren’t cooking, we somehow as a culture have developed that association, and it affects the way we remember childhood. Your memories change along with your experience.
Ok, so getting back to your study, why do baked goods in particular remind us of childhood?
I think it’s because you associate baked goods with a more positive eating experience than you do with, say, Brussels sprouts. I think most kids at one time or another ate Brussels sprouts, but they don’t say that they make them recall their childhood. Baked goods were given as a reward, at dessert. Or when you were coming home, and you were particularly hungry, you got cookies or baked goods for a snack, so that’s why people have this nostalgia for them. Nostalgia is really a sanitized memory of the past. We remember the good and forget the bad.
And what’s the relationship between nostalgia and smell?
The quickest way to a change of mood or behavior, quicker than any of the other sensory modalities, is smell. When you smell something you immediately decide whether you like it or you don’t like it, and then you figure out what it is, whether it’s rose or lilac–which is totally different than all the other sensory spheres. When you see a picture of a cow or a horse, you identify it, and then you decide if you like it or not. With smells it’s the exact opposite. It’s a pure affective or emotional sense.
Anatomically, it’s hardwired. The part of the brain that processes smells is actually right there where the emotions are, and that’s because odors were important for the survival of the species — to be able to detect if there were any particular pheromones present, or if a lion was about to attack you. It was important for an infant’s survival to be able to smell the mother. All these things were evolutionarily important, so it makes sense why smell would continue to be so emotional.
To what degree does the food we eat as children define our preferences as adults?
What we’ve found is that the foods that you like in ages 0-7 tend to be foods that you like throughout adulthood. The part of the brain that’s oriented towards food preferences seems to develop then; it’s almost imprinted. Now, the reality is, there can be negative experiences that change this — you develop an aversion, you get sick from something and then you avoid eating it again. But that’s the exception rather than the rule.
And how do we learn to like what we like?
Part of it has to do with past experience. If your mother eats Chinese food when she’s pregnant, you’re more likely to like Chinese food later on. If your mother eats carrots when she’s nursing you, you’re more likely to like carrots. There’s this phenomenon of “neophobia,” when you’re fearful of new foods. The more you’re exposed to a food, the more you like it, and if you’re exposed at a very early age, you like it that much more.
So part of it is this exposure, and part of it has to do with your genetics. We all taste differently. Some people can’t taste the bitter taste that’s found in green leafy vegetables, and they tend to like vegetables more. All of these things will impact your preferences. And superimposed on that are cultural expectations– seeing commercials for “Trix are for kids”– that make you more oriented towards one food over another.
We’ve also looked at geographic distributions of olfactory evoked nostalgia. While baked goods are number one, people from the East coast describe the smell of flowers as making them nostalgic for childhood. In the South it was the smell of fresh air, and in the Midwest it was the smell of farm animals. On the West coast it was the smell of meat cooking or meat barbequing. It also depends on when you were born. For people born from 1900 to 1930, natural smells made them nostalgic for their childhood—trees, horses, hay, pine, that sort of thing. People born from 1930 to 1980 were more likely to describe artificial smells that make them nostalgic for childhood—Playdoh, Pez, Sweet Tarts, Vapo rub, jet fuel.
But we’re able to like things that we didn’t like in early childhood, right?
We are culturally inclined to do so. For instance, coffee– kids don’t like coffee, because it is very bitter. But it’s part of the maturing experience in our society to drink coffee, so you can learn to drink this bitter drink that normally people would be averse towards. There are certain things you can acquire. Like alcohol, people don’t normally like the taste of beer, because it’s bitter, but you can learn to acquire that taste.
Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't even own a can opener... just a knife.
Everything in moderation, especially moderation. That was the truism passed down to me from my father when we would turn into the McDonald’s drive-thru and order our occasional Big Macs and Happy Meals. And despite what macrobiotic mommy dearest Gwyneth Paltrow might think, I somehow grew up without any Mc’Deformities.
During a conversation with former BBC host Jonathan Ross for the iTunes Festival earlier this week, Gwyneth confessed that she never let her kids pass through the Golden Arches, something that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who hears the self-confessed “foodie” talk about her healthy culinary home.
Although hey, maybe it’s not as healthy living as she’d like America to believe. “I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a can,” said the mother of two, before admitting that she “drinks constantly” while cooking. While it’s probably equally difficult to find canned Kraft and cocaine rocks anywhere in a 40-mile radius of the Paltrow-Martin estate, I can’t help but worry a little bit for young Moses and Apple. Undoubtedly she was being more facetious than factual, but what kind of example is mom setting when she talks about the evil of trans fats while guzzling Romane Conti straight from the bottle every time she puts on an apron?
When the recession hit, you could hear the words buzzing from the cell phones of every restaurant consultant in America: “It’s time for comfort food.” But under the mashed potatoes and meatloaf lies a question: What does “comfort food” really mean? What about it actually comforts us?
Let’s look at some big-time comfort foods: Fried chicken. French fries. Chocolate cake. When people talk about comfort food, the obvious explanation is that it’s all about nostalgia and missing Mommy. But that’s also cultural. Look at lutefisk, natto and the reddish-black blood sausage I was served once by a sad Belgian who took comfort in what struck me as something you might see in a hospital. And really, it takes more than this to create the rush of sensations that make us feel safe, calm and cared for. It’s a complex interplay of memory, history and brain chemistry, and while some basics apply — most of us are soothed by the soft, sweet, smooth, salty and unctuous — the specifics are highly personal.
In a certain cheese shop in my town, there is a rack of rolls. Gleaming golden outside and airy, stretchy, satiny inside, they’re sourdough and only vaguely square as if cut by clowns. One fits in my palm, then my sweatshirt pocket, which it must because this is the acid test by which I define comfort food: It’s small. It’s portable. It can be consumed silently. My comfort food must never call attention to itself. It must be dazzlingly bland, like Zen koans. Rolls. Marshmallows. Mochi. One round bowl of rice.
For you, of course, it’s something else. Celery, say, or vindaloo or wings. A friend of mine craves slick, sticky, flamboyant food that she can stir with slow, exaggerated swirls to make a sucking sound. This is her comfort food.
When you begin to eat, your eyes, hands and mouth start the chain of command. Then the brain kicks in. Sugar and starch spur serotonin, a neurotransmitter known to increase a sense of well-being. (It’s what makes Prozac work.) Salty foods spur oxytocin, aka the “cuddle chemical,” a hormone that is also spiked by hugs and orgasm. Hence, potato chips. Mice unable to taste the difference between regular and extra-high-calorie food in a recent study preferred the high-calorie kind, which suggests that fattening food appeals simply because it is fattening. Which makes sense, given how much fuel our prehistoric ancestors burned crisscrossing savannahs, fleeing carnivores and chasing prey. Fat is a good balm for the fear of starvation.
There’s also how the brain links emotion, memory and sensory stimuli. Popsicles nibbled to break childhood fevers, pizza when your track team won, coconut on your honeymoon: The brain associates good experiences with specific flavors, fragrances and textures, coding them as harbingers of happiness. Henceforth, even when you neither have a fever nor have won a race, eating Popsicles still brings the rush of relief and pizza feels like a reward.
But buried in this (like the caramel at the heart of a Milk Dud) is the deeper question of what counts as comfort.
Neuroscientists define it as the opposite of stress. Whether with pharmaceuticals or firearms or flannel sheets or funnel cake, we seek to de-stress by any means necessary. The brain reaches its relaxed, restorative comfort state when we feel safe and/or when we receive rewards and/or when we feel part of something bigger than ourselves — a culture or a community.
Security, reward and connectedness: Each of these three feelings activates a different portion of the brain, and each of these is more or less crucial to each of us, which further explains why we don’t all relish the same comfort foods. A competitive person or one who feels chronically undervalued cherishes foods that the brain has coded as rewards. A loner finds no comfort in those foods the brain links with community. An abused person who lives in fear might hoard safety foods.
When we feel endangered, unsung and/or lonesome, we eat.
Food is a fort we build. Rolls in my pocket feel like ballast. As a former anorexic, I imagine they will keep me safe because they are small, round, clean, dry and can be eaten stealthily. Someone else might feel most secure when eating pudding, say, because she ate it in the playroom before knowing the meaning of pain.
Food is the gift we give ourselves. My husband beams as if it’s Christmas whenever Sriracha sauce or tonsil-searing salsa make him sweat. His Jewish/Danish DNA never predicted this. He grew up in a capsicum-free home. Yet kimchee signals “treat” to him, because hot-spicy foods were his private discovery, not something that was ever given to him but something he gave himself. They are his prize, and thus they comfort him in that explosive, pore-widening way by which hot saunas heal. (Which makes me think: Is it reincarnation? Given that some people find comfort in what they grew up with, and others specifically in what they didn’t grow up with, do we choose our comfort foods or do they choose us? Does this process parallel the ways in which we acquire other preferences — for bondage, say, or for stiletto heels or hairy men?)
Food is also the friend who never disappoints or ditches us. Psychologists call comfort food a “social surrogate” — in other words, not quite replacing real companions but reminding us of them. Participants in yet another recent study felt less lonely after writing about — and not even necessarily eating — comfort foods. The psychologists who designed that study theorized correctly that consuming comfort foods soothes us in the exact same ways as wearing our favorite clothes or watching our favorite TV shows. Reminding us of those who love us and/or look and talk like us, comfort food also reminds us of who we are. Away from home, we seek the foods of home.
Of course, all matters of psychology are unrelentingly complex. Comfort food feels good, but — for some of us — in that first rush is also a twinge: For some, comfort food invokes a special hot-faced shame because both food and comfort are so intimate, and using one to do the other borders on self-pleasure. From there, it’s just one small step to guilty pleasure, which is what most of us would call caramel corn and curly fries. Perhaps it’s because in this crowded, hard world, we have convinced ourselves that seeking comfort is itself embarrassing, as if need makes us weak. We are ashamed to crave the salty, starchy, soft, unctuous and sweet, because we tell ourselves we are too smart to want what the judgmental would call junk — although, surrounded by food that is market-tested to appeal to our most primal urges, we don’t stand a chance. If comfort food exposes those urges, a drive-thru window can become a harsh confessional.
Anneli Rufus is the author of several books, most recently "Magnificent Corpses: Searching through Europe for St. Peter's Head,
St. Stephen's Hand, St. Chiara's Heart and Other Saints' Relics" (Marlowe & Co.).
More Anneli Rufus.
JJ Virgin has one of the stranger jobs out there: After spending 25 years studying health and fitness, she now spends her time on TLC, turning around the lives of food addicts on “Freaky Eaters.” (No, that’s not the show about people who eat laundry soap, a similar program on the same network called “My Super Strange Addiction.”) “Freaky Eaters” documents the life of a person addicted to a certain type of edible food — french fries, meat, and corn syrup have all been on the menu — as well as their recovery with the help of two specialists, Virgin and Dr. Mike Dow.
We spoke to JJ Virgin over the phone about what qualifies someone to be a “freaky eater,” as well as some of the more extreme measures they’ve taken on the program to make people confront their dangerous life choices.
This is the second season of the show, and there has been a lot of controversy about programs similar to “Freaky Eaters,” like “Hoarders” and “Intervention.” Some people are wondering if putting these people up on screen is helpful or just exploitative. What is your response to that sort of claim?
On “Freaky Eaters” we are dealing with people who don’t really fall into one specific disorder, one kind of psychological classification that can be treated. These are people that fall through the cracks, and they are desperate. They need help. I watch some of these shows out there that I do think are exploitative — though I do think most of them are more life-changing than exploitative — and I have to tell you, that’s not what we do. We do shock therapy, so you have people see the extent that they need to make the change, but I think everything is done in a very respectful way.
When you are dealing with someone who drinks gallons of tartar sauce and make them wade around in a pool of it, or have a guy who loves meat spend a day turning a pile of it into ground chuck in a freezer basement, would you call that behavioral therapy? Is that something you’d see psychological professionals doing if people weren’t falling through the cracks?
You know, behavioral therapy is really more what we do at the end of the show, what I call the “lateral shift”: having people make small changes in their lives. When someone is an addict of any type, the classic thing is to deny the problem or the extent of it. Shock therapy is to show these people their problem in a way that makes it impossible to deny or to downplay it.
What were some of the more outrageous examples you’ve had on the show?
The meat episode, that was so disgusting. We were hysterically laughing because the meat was spewing everywhere, as it was being ground up. The first season, we had a girl who ate 6,200 calories of sugar every day. She did all her shopping at the dollar store; it was amazing she wasn’t morbidly obese. So we had her lie down in a coffin and covered her with all the sugar she ate, and had her son read off a eulogy about all the things she was going to miss if she died from her lifestyle.
That’s intense.
We also had a pizza guy, where we had him pour all the fat from all the pizzas he ate in a year into a big bucket. And then we had him pour the bucket into jars. And at the end we had him dump the bucket, but instead he threw it, and it landed right on the cameraman, who was then covered in fat goop. And then we had a guy who ate 3-6 burgers a day, so we backed a truck filled with burgers right up to him and dumped out all the patties, just covered him up.
I can see how a lot of this is TV-friendly. Do you have a hard time differentiating yourself from the other TLC show, “My Strange Addiction,” where people eat stuff that is non-edible (like couch cushions, cigarette ash, and laundry detergent)?
People confuse us all the time. But what I think makes our show stand out is how relatable it is. I have people come up and ask me all the time, “This is what I do, am I freaky eater?” And I’m like “No, just because you eat a muffin everyday doesn’t get you qualified, sorry.”
Well that’s what’s so interesting, right? How blurry the lines can get? Because you’re not showing people with Pica, you’re showing people addicted to French fries. And I think a lot of people at home roll their eyes and go “Sure, we’re all addicted to French fries” until they see exactly how much this person is eating of it.
We did have a woman who had Pica and ate a lot of corn syrup, but that is still edible.
In my mind, the difference is severity … you can die from being obese, but it’s probably not going to kill you as fast as, say, downing laundry detergent every day.
Maybe not as fast, but you’ll find what we deal with is way more common, and therefore way more relatable. We try to get to the root of a lot of these issues on the show, because there is a psychological element to it, though a big part of being a “freaky eater” is biochemistry. Many of these people have a food sensitivity. They either are addicted to one taste, or they hate another kind. So the burger guy and the french fries person, they were both supertasters, they could taste things a mile away. And then this year we have a guy addicted to maple syrup, and he’s a “sweet taster”: nothing is sweet enough for him. These people can’t taste sweet well, so they keep wanting things sweeter and sweeter.
That’s interesting: so our predetermined sensitivity to different tastes can determine how hooked we get on a food?
Oh totally…we’re only at the beginning of understanding the biochemistry behind “taste.” It turns out you can taste things all down your G.I. tract. What we’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of some of the extreme forms of people with a tasting sensitivity.
“Freaky Eaters” can be found on TLC at 10:00 and 10:30 EST every Sunday night.
The police are not here to deal with your delivery mix-up.
How many times has this happened to you? You go home and try to enjoy a nice dinner of Chinese food delivery. But when your meal arrives, they’ve got the order completely wrong!
Do you:
A) Call back the restaurant and ask for a refund;
B) Just eat the food and promise to deal with it next time;
C) Call the police
If you answered C, you are not alone. A woman in Savannah, Ga., called 911 to rectify her dinner order yesterday. This was the result:
Sadly, these kinds of calls aren’t as uncommon as you might think. In March 2009 a woman called the police after being given the wrong order of McNuggets at McDonald’s.
Regardless, it’s 2011 now and we’re all grown-ups. That doesn’t mean we expand our 911 repertoires to calling in about botched Chinese food orders. It means that we stop tying up the police phone line unless we actually have an emergency that doesn’t involve a delivery service.
McDonald’s is under attack again for force-feeding our nation’s children greasy, delicious fries. A group called Corporate Accountability International took out full-page ads today in several prominent newspapers, titled “Doctor’s Orders: Stop Marketing Junk Food to Children.“
And while this grievance might not seem new, exactly, CAI is launching another campaign on Thursday against Ronald McDonald himself, whom the watchdog group called a “Deep Fried Joe Camel.” They claim Ronald’s the equivalent of a drug pusher for MSG-addicted kids.
But how “friendly” is Ronald? A new study done by outside marketing group Ace Metric found that in a survey group of 500, an overwhelming amount found a guy with big red lips and white greasepaint more creepy than cute.
McDonald’s refuses to give up on Ronald, though, and its defense on why it needs to keep a terrifying clown as its mascot would be charming if it weren’t so ridiculous and backward. Below, five of the responses McDonald’s has given for keeping Ronald on the payroll.
3. Complaint: Too many damn clowns running around.
McDonald’s response: “There’s only one Ronald,” McDonald’s chief creative officer Marlena Peleo-Lazar said in response to several questions about how many actors portray the smiling clown.
4. Complaint: He is hurting a brand image that is trying to be more adult … like Starbucks.
McDonald’s response: He is the brand image. “It would be almost as if the Geico gecko disappeared, or the Aflac duck,” says one marketing strategist. God forbid.
5. Complaint: Ronald encourages childhood obesity.
McDonald’s response: Around 2004, McDonald’s christened Ronald as a “balanced, active lifestyles ambassador,” and stuck him in commercials where he trained for the Olympics. He got workout clothes. He got a tuxedo. He moved from McDonaldLand into the real world.
You know who can also move into the real world after being trapped in a fantasy land? Freddy Krueger.
It’s actually in CAI’s favor to have a scary mascot act as a deterrent for children trying to buy fries. It should be thanking McDonald’s for keeping such a creepy figure right in front of the golden arches.
Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't even own a can opener... just a knife. 
Let’s look at some big-time comfort foods: Fried chicken. French fries. Chocolate cake. When people talk about comfort food, the obvious explanation is that it’s all about nostalgia and missing Mommy. But that’s also cultural. Look at lutefisk, natto and the reddish-black blood sausage I was served once by a sad Belgian who took comfort in what struck me as something you might see in a hospital. And really, it takes more than this to create the rush of sensations that make us feel safe, calm and cared for. It’s a complex interplay of memory, history and brain chemistry, and while some basics apply — most of us are soothed by the soft, sweet, smooth, salty and unctuous — the specifics are highly personal.
JJ Virgin and Dr. Mike Dow on "Freaky Eaters." 
The police are not here to deal with your delivery mix-up. 
Who wouldn't accept food from this guy? 
