The University of Illinois News Bureau carried
an article back in 2003 about a study relating comfort foods and gender. From the article:
"Comfort foods are foods whose consumption evoke a psychologically pleasurable state for a person," reported Brian Wansink, an Illinois marketing professor who heads the Food and Brand Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Drawing from national survey questionnaires, the lab has concluded that a person’s comfort-food preferences are formed at an early age and are triggered, in addition to hunger, by conditioned associations and gender differences.
Men, for example, find comfort in foods associated with meals prepared by their mothers (mashed potatoes, pasta, meat, and soup) rather than from snacks and sweets (excepting ice cream).
But what is comfort for men is work for women. "Because adult females are not generally accustomed to having hot food prepared for them and as children saw the female as the primary food preparer, they tend to gain psychological comfort from less labor-intensive foods such as chocolate, candy and ice cream," Wansink said. Indeed, one study found that 92 percent of self-reported "chocolate addicts" were female.
So, what does it say about a person if, in the throes of satisfying a comfort food craving, he or she follows up a big plate of pasta with some Godiva chocolates?
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