C.J. Braden • 2 Minute Read
Why We Crave Comfort Food in Winter
As the temperatures continue to drop you may find yourself craving high calorie very rich comfort foods. It's winter. Most of us are burying ourselves in fleecy clothing and fluffy socks, and we make sure we have a bowl of hearty soup or a hot tea wherever we go.
We are drawn to bowls of oozing cheesy pastas and we find out how to make stuffed bell pepper soup at eatingonadime.com. Comfort foods make us feel good when the weather is cold, and knowing that you have hot chocolate with fat marshmallows floating in it when you get home is something that makes you feel excited to go home at the end of the day.
A hot cup of cocoa is comforting
All of these other comfort foods make us feel fantastic, but understanding why we crave them is actually a really smart thing to do. If you're trying to watch your diet, you can still have comfort foods through the winter, you just have to make sure you are making good choices. So, why do we crave comfort food in the winter months?
Baked macaroni and cheese is a delicious comfort food
1-Your belly is talking to your brain. You know that throughout the year your stomach produces the happiness chemicals we need to make us feel good. When we eat, neurochemicals are triggered in the brain and those chemicals are the happiness and well-being of dopamine and serotonin.
Grilled cheese is a quick comfort food idea
Usually, we gain these happy hormones when we exercise and when we are exposed to sunlight, but these things are not too popular through the winter months. That delicious cheesy macaroni cheese you've been looking at though, that is what's giving you that happy chemical flash. When we eat those comfort foods we feel happier, so we continue to do that through the winter.
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2- A history lesson. Evolution is a glorious thing, it moved us from the water to the land and then up on two legs. It's also playing a part in why we crave more comfort foods in the colder months.
Long before we enjoyed things such as heating and housing, we increased our body weight during the winter so that we could keep warm and be more likely to survive. It used to be a protective mechanism and for some of us we still lean on that protective mechanism to feel good in the winter time.
We don't live in those shelters in the woods anymore and we don't forage for food like we used to, but food cravings in winter are still programmed into our DNA. Biology is a complex thing, and when we want to fatten up and sleep through the winter, that's pretty common.
Chili can warm you up in the winter
3- Our mood dips in the winter. During the colder months we tend to feel more sad. This is why seasonal affective disorder is a thing. Social theories say that people learn from each other when we observe and imitate, so when we see other people who are unhappy or sad our moods also tend to dip and they tend to correlate with the weather.
Naturally lower moods are due to a lack of vitamin D, so we self medicate with carbohydrate and sugar rich foods. These release glucose straight into our brain which makes us feel happier and that can help us to come out of that bad mood.
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C.J. (Carolyn) Braden is a regular contributor and editor for Carolyn’s Blooming Creations. She has been featured in numerous media publications such as InStyle Magazine, on HGTV, on Bustle.com, and more. She is the author of the books Georgia McMasters in Amethyst Lake Cemetery, How To Be Yourself: 3 Ways To Help You Being You, and the illustrator for the children’s book Bridging Connections. She is a former classroom teacher that now dedicates her life to educating others on how to live their most healthy, creative and happy life. Learn more about her visiting our About Us page.
This is a collaborative post and may contain affiliate links. All opinions and ideas expressed in this post, however, are based on my personal point of view.