Comfort food, why men and women are so different in what they choose

So did you know that men and women even differ in what comfort foods they prefer?

As most of our preferences can be conditioned at a young age, this might be that different types of experiences of men and women cause them to have different comfort food preferences.  Food connotations from childhood can create strong ties with lifelong eating habits.  In a research paper they found that if adult males are accustomed to having meals prepared for them, they may develop stronger preferences for hot or prepared foods as comfort foods.  When a male thinks of prepared food he thinks of someone caring for him, bringing comfort.  On the other hand, adult females may  not be accustomed to having food prepared for them, perhaps because they may have been encouraged to be the food preparers.  When a female thinks of prepared meals they think of work. 

If you look at what the female’s choice is it is one of convenience and less preparation such as chocolates.  In one study on “chocolate addiction” showed that 92% of the self-selected “addicts” were female.

Trends have been changing in this new generation, as convenience foods have been introduced as main meals in busy households.  If we look at young people their preference of comfort food is salt and sugar dense foods, the burger etc.

Does this tendency of needing comfort food go back to how food is used as a tool in our homes?

Food is the reward – “if you get an A on your test we’ll go out for ice cream.”

Food as guilt – “Clean your plate, children are starving in Africa.”

Food as punishment – “Finish your vegetables or you can’t watch TV.”

Food as comfort – “Eat this pudding it will make you feel better.”

What cues do you need to change when it comes to food?

In the book Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, in Chicago at one of the theaters the 1:05 pm show with every ticket bought you got a free bucket of popcorn and a free drink.  Some people where given large buckets of popcorn and some medium.  As it was the 1:05pm show most people had just had lunch. 

The catch to this exercise was that the popcorn was not fresh it was five days old, so it was so stale.  During the movie, people would eat a couple of bites, put the bucket down and later pick it up again a few minutes later.  It might not have been good enough to eat all at once, but they couldn't leave it alone.  After the movie ended everyone got a short survey to complete.  Once the buckets were weighed it was discovered that on average people with the large bucket of popcorn ate on average 173 more calories of popcorn (equivalent of 21 more dips into the bucket).   The popcorn studies were run in a number of places and each time showed similar results.  

Through these studies a few things became clear, people eat more when given larger containers, it did not matter if popcorn was not fresh or if they had just eaten.  Did people eat because they liked the popcorn? No.  Did they eat because they were hungry? No.  They ate because of the cues around them - this of course was a movie and that's what you do at movies eat popcorn.  They also realised that people also ate because they heard others eating the popcorn, they found that people ate more because of the distracting movie they did not focus on what they ate.  Brain says that simply thinking that a meal will taste good can lead you to eat more.

This got me thinking how many every day cues do we have that make us eat certain foods.  Just this morning after taking my dogs for a walk I watched as my spaniel is so conditioned now that after a walk I will give him a treat from a particular cupboard, so as I walked in Max ran straight for the cupboard.  We do so much of our daily routine out of cues and habit, so if we need to lose weight or want to correct what we eat we need to start changing the cues.