Four thin mints = one salad

Let me set the scene for you: It’s the Thursday before spring break. Less than 24 hours stands between me and a week of relaxing, sleeping, and spending time with the people I love. I won’t lie, it’s been a long few weeks leading up to this. Lots of work and trying to find a (real) job has not put me in the best place mentally. So this afternoon when I walked by the table of cute Girl Scouts, I gave up any pretenses of will power and bought a box of Thin Mints.

It was a tough choice between Tagalongs and Thin Mints. Samoas come in 3rd place.

Needless to say, they were (and still are) delicious, and perked me up a bit for class. As class went on, I started to think about what I was going to have for dinner when I met up with friends later in the evening. This thought was then followed up with something along the lines of “well I should probably eat a salad or something more healthy since I just ate half a dozen thin mints.” So why did I ch

This thought is something that I hear vocalized on campus at least once a day, predominantly by female students. So why did I choose the thin mints, and why do people choose Mac & Cheese for dinner instead of a grilled chicken salad?

People don’t necessarily make food choices based on nutrition. Though I haven’t done the research, I’d venture a guess to say that it is a 60/40 split between reason and emotion. Reason might say that if you have something more decadent for lunch, you should balance that out with something more nutritional, even if it’s not your first choice. Yet emotion might say the exact opposite: I’m going to eat what I want, because I care about how it makes me feel.

After doing a little more reading, I’m definitely not the first person to have this line of thought. The Oxford English dictionary defines comfort food as, “food that comforts or affords solace; hence, any food (freq. with a high sugar or carbohydrate content) that is associated with childhood or with home cooking.” In a journal article from Food & Foodways,  Locher et. al. examine how individuals use food as comfort when they feel stressed or sad.

The following is a quote from this paper that I felt particularly resonated with me:

“Foods are distinct from other objects that people may use to derive comfort because they are incorporated or taken into the body; thus they thus have physical, as well as psychological and emotional effects.”

I have a serious sweet tooth, and I did feel better after I had those thin mints. I have a lot of control over that, compared to the relatively small amount of control I have over finding a job. So maybe people choose mac & cheese over a salad because it makes them feel like home. Maybe their grandmother had a killer recipe and mac & cheese is a kind of flashback. Or maybe it was the first thing they saw. Regardless, emotions are important to consider when looking at a person’s food choices.

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FN 3/5