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FROM LAB TO LUNCH

COMFORT: ALL IN YOUR HEAD? Sabeen Abbas

as restaurant-like as possible. This provides not only a sound culinary education but also a sense of disci-pline and culinary understanding to his students. Tropepe is “honoured” to be amongst his colleagues; as he explains, “The entire faculty and administration don’t show up to a job every morning, they show up to school to change lives and to be an example to our students.”

Currently Chef Tropepe is develop-ing his first cookbook, STUFFED�, his full line of food products and catering company called Forgetaboutit� Food Service and his restaurant, Myx Res-taurant and Lounge, which will serve a well balanced “myx” of contemporary versions of various cuisines to Phila-delphia diners.

“These are exciting times for me,” says Tropepe. He’s “grateful” and “humble” for the experiences of “work-ing with some of the best chefs a person can stand next to, humble for my edu-cation and the teachers that taught me not just how to cook, but what it takes to be a good chef. I hope to pass that on to my students, with the hope they will someday surpass me.”

In this volume, Chef Tropepe soothes us with sweetness. “When you are in need of a comfortable dessert, stressed, or just want to satisfy your sweet tooth, this will hit the spot.”

BUTTERSCOTCH PECAN PIE

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

3 large eggs

1 cup (250 mL) light corn syrup

1/8 tsp (1 mL) salt

1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract

1 cup (250 mL) light brown sugar,

firmly packed

2 tbsp (30 mL) butter, melted

1 cup (250 mL) pecan halves

1 9” pie shell

1 jar butterscotch ice cream syrup

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

Preheat the oven to 400F (205C). In

a medium bowl slightly beat the eggs,

add the corn syrup, salt, vanilla, brown

sugar and butter and mix well. Add

the nuts. Pour into the unbaked pie

shell and bake for 15 minutes. After 15

minutes has passed reduce the heat

to 350F (175C) and bake for 30 to 35

minutes or until the edges seems set.

Let cool on a wire wrack. Just before

serving heat the butterscotch syrup and

pour generously over the pie.

Chef Tropepe is

developing his

first cookbook,

STUFFED!

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FROM LAB TO LUNCH

“[COMFORT FOODS ARE] FOODS WE

REACH FOR WHEN WE’RE IN A VERY

VERY GOOD MOOD OR WHEN WE ARE

IN A VERY VERY BAD MOOD.”

cause distress is a lot more important than playing Sudoku or writing sym-phonies. It’s these primitive systems of reward and aversion, many of which are located in the limbic, or reptil-ian, brain, that also stimulate many habitual behaviours.

Although they still don’t know all the ways that the brain manages plea-surable stimuli, researchers speculate that pleasure and reward can involve several operations in the brain. The amygdala is the “fear centre”, which helps decide whether we should enjoy or run away from an experience; it can be soothed by stimulation of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) produc-tion. The hippocampus helps produce memories of an experience, including pleasurable associations with food (such as a romantic meal or family dinner). The frontal cortex organizes and manages the information, helping us understand it on a higher cognitive level. And the VTA-accumbens pathway helps judge how pleasurable an experi-ence is. The more rewarding something is, the more likely we are to want to repeat it. (Interestingly, this appears to have a “shutoff switch”: we judge a cer-tain amount of experience as fun; more than that is unpleasant. For example, a few minutes of a roller coaster is fun; a

few hours or days would be awful.)And the rest of the head gets in

on the act too. Even before we digest, we have mechanical systems that see, smell, chew, and taste the food, and integrate and interpret the input the brain receives. All of these sensory pathways combine with higher-level understandings of food to create a “comfort food experience”.

Because there are many reward pathways in the brain and their opera-tions are complex, there are several reasons for us to seek and enjoy com-fort food. While eating comfort foods can be a way to soothe oneself, people don’t just eat comfort foods when they are depressed or lonely. Indeed, many people eat comfort foods when they are in a celebratory mood. Eating a meal typically reduces arousal and ir-ritable feelings and increases feelings of calmness and positivity. However, people’s response to a meal can also depend on meal size and expectations. If the meal was too small or un-healthy, it may make the person feel more negative after eating.

Drs. Tobias Esch and George B. Ste-fano also suggest that there’s a differ-ence between pleasure and enjoyment. As they explain in one of their research articles, “pleasure can be seen as the

good feeling that comes from satisfying homeostatic needs such as hunger, sex and bodily comfort, whereas enjoy-ment may refer to the good feelings people experience when they break through the limits of homeostasis – when they do something that stretches them beyond their current existence… Interestingly, when given a chance, most people choose pleasure instead of enjoyment…” Thus, for example, people are more likely to opt for the quick rush of a chocolate bar than the slower, more gradual enjoyment of the good health resulting from careful nutrition.

When it comes to reward pathways, opioids, dopamine and serotonin are three key chemical players in the brain. Opiodgenic and dopaminergenic pathways can be activated by energy cues from food, such as a fatty texture. This improves mood and relieves stress. Many chemicals such as nicotine and recreational drugs stimulate similar pathways. Sweet fatty foods low in protein may alleviate stress in some people via the serotonergic system. In rats, these kinds of foods act as part of a feedback loop and release glucocorti-coid hormones and insulin to restrain activity in the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. This pathway is also as-sociated with abdominal obesity.

“WE MAKE ABOUT 250 DECISIONS RELATING TO FOOD EVERY

DAY. WE’RE NOT EVEN AWARE OF THE VAST MAJORITY OF

DECISIONS. MANY FACTORS INFLUENCE OUR CHOICES: THE

ENVIRONMENT, THE SIZE OF THE PLATE, THE SHAPE OF THE

BOX, WHAT THE PERSON NEXT TO US IS EATING. BUT THEY

DON’T EVEN SHOW UP ON OUR RADAR SCREEN.”

So says Dr. Brian Wansink, author of the best-selling book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, and John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and Nutritional Science and Director of the Food & Brand Lab at Cornell University.

The words “comfort food” tend to conjure up images of either home-made foods such as pastas, stews, and steaks or convenient snack foods like potato chips, ice cream and chocolate. A 2003 study looked at comfort food preferences across gender and age and found that men are more likely to view meal-like foods as comfort foods, whereas women are more likely to choose snack-like foods. Younger people in general are more likely to consider snack-like foods to be comfort foods than older people. Also,

women are more likely to associate comfort foods with feelings of guilt than men.

“One particular comfort food – chocolate – appears to release endor-phins in the brain primarily in women. It doesn’t have the same effect in men. It seems to have a magical influence on women,” says Wansink. A study on chocolate addiction found that people chose to eat chocolate to feel the reward of eating it caused by the effect on the brain and to avoid the negative conse-quences of not eating it.

Wansink explains that understand-ing comfort food requires us to look at two distinct factors. “One is physi-ological. The other is psychological. Physiologically comfort foods have one or four of four different char-acteristics. They have sugar, salt, fat

or dairy. Physiologically, all of these macronutrients can be associated with evolutionary processes. For example, a long time ago, the people who ate fatty foods were better able to survive fam-ine than the guy next door. Salt helped people survive drought better because it helps with water retention. People who developed a taste for sweet would avoid sour poisonous berries. The physiological dimension of comfort foods looks at foods we reach for when we’re in a very very good mood or when we are in a very very bad mood.”

Our behavioural impulses when we experience emotional extremes are deeply primitive ones. Pleasure and pain are governed by systems deep in the brain that evolved well before our higher cognitive abilities. After all, the ability to escape from things that

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I WILL READILY ADMIT IT: I LIKE COMFORT

FOOD AS MUCH AS ANYONE. SPAGHETTI AND

MEAT BALLS ON FRIDAY NIGHT AFTER A HARD

WEEK. SHEPHERD’S PIE ON A COLD WINTER

EVENING. BUT IS TOO MUCH COMFORT FOOD

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

NOT-SO-COMFORTING THOUGHTS ON COMFORT FOOD

Stefano, the Director of the Neuro-science Research Institute at the State University of New York, and Esch, a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Germany, study pleasure systems in the brain. As they explain: “A high calorie intake activates our reward physiology. That was an advan-tageous strategy in the ancient times when there was not enough food for all (i.e., always) and a regular, daily calorie intake could not always be realized. By activating reward pro-cesses, 'comfort food' (energy) made us feel good and reinforced the search for such food. The energy surplus was stored in the body and we were better prepared for future famines. When hungry, craving for ‘comfort food’ (i.e. high energy food) occurred. However, in our days and in combination with our sedentary life-styles, the same originally helpful mechanism poses a threat on our health.”.

According to Stefano and Esch, “Understanding the reward ‘trap’ in eating and learning how to enjoy food and the pleasure of it without neces-sarily having to rely on comfort foods” is an important step towards eating healthier. “The question of ‘how’ we eat (activating our senses, really tast-ing, smelling etc, i.e., mindfulness, the opposite to fast food) will make a

big difference in the end. It has never been so easy and pleasurable to eat healthy as in our days. For example, a Mediterranean diet with its composi-tion of a variety of food choices, in-cluding healthy fats like unsaturated fatty acids, omega 3 and 6 etc., carbs and proteins.”

On the other hand, it’s never been so easy to fool our senses and natural pleasure mechanisms. Sweet-smelling, sugary and fatty foods abound, but many of these aren’t the fruits, nuts, and freshly cooked game meats of ten thousand years ago – they’re artificial copies designed to look, taste, and function the same in our brains.

So what is the ultimate comfort food? Wansink weighs in. “The ulti-mate comfort food would have sugar, salt and lots of fat. It would be a food that combines the greatest number of all four components of comfort food. For one person, it could be ice cream – it has sugar, salt, fat and dairy. For others, it could be chocolate cake. Or potato chips. Another example might be hot buttered popcorn with M&Ms. It would be strange to think of that as comfort food if you didn’t grow up with it, but for some people that is comfort food.”

References

Dallman, Mary et al. “Chronic Stress and

Obesity: A New View of ‘Comfort Food’.

Proceedings of the National Academy

of Sciences 100 no. 20 (September

2003):11696–11701.

Esch, Tobias and George B. Stefano.

“The Neurobiology of Pleasure, Reward

Processes, Addiction and their Health

Implications.” Neuroendocrinology Letters

25 no.4 (August 2004): 235-251.

Gibson, Edward Leigh. “Emotional Influences

on Food Choice: Sensory, Physiological

and Psychological Pathways.” Physiology &

Behavior 89 no. 1 (August 2006): 53-61.

Hamer, Rob Jon Prinz, Eric Dransfield,

Margriet Westerterp-Plantenga. “Making

Sense of Food.” Physiology & Behavior 89

no.1 (August 2006): 1-3.

USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and

Promotion: www.cnpp.usda.gov

Wansink, Brian. Mindless Eating: Why

We Eat More Than We Think. New York:

Bantam, 2006. www.mindlesseating.org

Wansink, Brian; Cheney, Matthew M.;

and Chan, Nina. “Exploring comfort food

preferences across age and genders.”

Physiology & Behavior 79 (2003): 739– 747.

“It has never been so

easy and pleasurable

to eat healthy as in

our days...”

On the other hand,

it’s never been so easy

to fool our senses

and natural pleasure

mechanisms.