"food studies" news and stories

Sometimes you just have to ask: "How come I knew that already without having to consult a shrink?" Brace yourselves for this shocker: Comfort food is, well, comforting.

That's right, as noted today in UPI.com, two graduate students from the University of Buffalo conducted an experiment in which three control groups were giving an assignment to write about something that made them feel lonely, but the group whose theme revolved around comfort food was able to pull itself out of the dark mood. (The study, published in the magazine Psychological Science, said nothing about weight gain).

"Throughout everyone's daily lives they experience stress, often associated with our connections with others," says Jordan Troisi, lead author of the study. "Comfort food can serve as a ready-made, easy resource for remedying a sense of loneliness." Glad to have it proved by science, but most of us know this just by using coming sense: Eat mac and cheese, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes can make us feel good but isn't going to help us fit into that swimming suit by summer; salads will make you love the way you look, but you'll be too sad to care. Feeling lonely? Might want to just make a new friend instead of looking to food for the answer.

If you're a woman who falls prey to food cravings, it looks like you can now just blame it on the fact that you're female.

Newsday reports that a new study conducted by researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton found that men are able to better control their cravings. The researchers used brain imaging to mark the areas of the brain that were activated when subjects were presented with their favorite foods. Over a collection of scan days, the subjects had to look at their food, note its flavor, and even try to curb their desire with a special "inhibition technique." When the men used the technique, their brain activity went down, but when the women did it, their brains stayed stimulated.

There's no word on the "why" right now, but man, I never realized brain activity could be a bad thing!

Let's face it -- we're screwed. No matter what we eat, or what we don't, there will be a study out there to tell us that our habits might ship us straight to the grave. I've given up caring, and just try to live with some sort of foodie balance, even if I can devour a few bottles of homemade pop in a day if I'm thirsty, or finish up Christmas cookies in the blink of an eye.

But back to the latest cancer-causer -- The Washington Post reports that a new study has found that rats who were fed diets rich in inorganic phosphates suffered an accelerated growth of lung cancer. However, Dr. John Heffner says: "an individual shouldn't act on these results as yet, other than to encourage funding organizations such as the National Institutes of Health to support research to see whether dietary phosphates encourage cancer."

What foods have phosphates? Leafy veggies. Fruits. Meat. Poultry. Plus, the stuff is added to other foods like baking powder, ice cream, preserves, and carbonated colas. See? We're screwed, so I say: Let's indulge!