Turkey isn’t my favorite, but one dish I can’t live without for Thanksgiving is my mom’s Snow Mashed Potatoes. The recipe has more sour cream and cream cheese than potatoes, which may be why it’s so delicious. I started looking forward to these potatoes in early November and I always make enough to keep the rest going for at least a week, which means the dish is my annual time-freeing pure joy. . I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten them every Thanksgiving since I was a toddler and the bites often take me back to different years and different dining rooms.
How and why do certain foods bring us so much joy? And what can be said about the foods that we consider the most pleasant? I asked a nutrition scientist, a psychologist who studies how our brains process sensory information, and a nutritional psychiatrist to learn more. I’ve learned that taste and nutritional content affect how food feels to us, but much of the happiness we derive from our favorite foods comes from the memories we make. arouse us and those we are with as we enjoy them.
Our brains reward us more for some foods than for others.
Because food is so essential to our survival, the brain rewards us for eating whatever it is, says Paul Breslin, a nutritional scientist at Rutgers University and Monell Chemical Senses Center. way of releasing opioid-based chemicals that make us feel good. But as anyone who’s ever eaten apple pie knows, sweets can make us feel especially good. carbohydrates get a raise levels of serotonin in the brain, a chemical that improves mood.
Uma Naidoo, a professional chef and nutritional psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and author of “This Is Your Brain on Food,” said: When we eat these foods, we feel calm and happy. Some people prefer snacking to others: A study Find that people who are particularly sensitive to sweetness – those who can detect sweet flavors at lower concentrations than others and who are generally “sweet” – have a reward response in the brain to food. have stronger sugars than those who are less sensitive to sweets.
Past and present companies shape the foods we find comfort in.
However, some foods are particularly emotionally satisfying for reasons that have little to do with their taste or nutritional content. Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford who studies human perception, explains: After all, different cultures have different comfort foods. And many of America’s favorite comfort foods — like chili peppers, or tomato soup — aren’t particularly sweet or high in carbohydrates.
“Often we love food because we have fond memories attached to it,” says Dr. Mom’s mashed potatoes reminded me of the joys of the holidays and extended family reunions in the past. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, research has Find that we crave comfort food when we feel lonely.) We also draw For the dishes we were given to us by those who cared for us as children, this may help explain our collective love of chicken noodle soup, which many parents give their sick children. they eat to make them feel better.
The smell of food can also evoke strong memories. The part of the brain responsible for processing odors is directly connected to the amygdala, the area of the brain that processes emotions, and the hippocampus that processes memory. And our memory of smells is long-lasting and accurate, especially when it comes to scents we’re first exposed to. childhood. That’s why you can smell pumpkin pie baking in the oven and remember the first time you baked it with your grandmother.
These associations can also go the other way. You can sometimes feel sad when you eat foods that remind you of loved ones you miss, Dr. Breslin said. We can also avoid foods that we associate with bad experiences. I haven’t eaten cheese since I was 8 years old, because it was the last thing I ate before having an upset stomach. (Thank goodness, the spoiled food was fresh cheese, not chocolate chip cookies.)
In addition to past memories, the context in which we eat food shapes how well we enjoy them in the present moment, and our taste experience can be enhanced by a “sense of community.” , feeling warm and enjoying together,” said Dr. Naidoo. I appreciate my mom’s Snow Mashed Potatoes even more today because I get to eat them with my husband and two children, the three people I love most in the world.
I am so grateful for this Thanksgiving — including that I have had the honor of writing the Well newsletter for the past seven months. I’ve enjoyed exploring a lot of topics that appeal to you. But starting next week, I’ll pass the newsletter on to Well’s new columnist, Jancee Dunn.
I will still be writing regularly for the Well section, and you can continue to follow me on Facebook, Twitter or InstagramOr visit my website.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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