Tagged: Comfort Food

My mother loves to cook, and as a result she raised an entire family of food obsessed children who also love to cook. My father rarely cooked but was a big fan of eating and proclaimed after every meal, “Dear, this is the best [insert main course here] I’ve EVER had!” She would roll her eyes at his genuine but exaggerated praise and I would chime in with, “Mom, this was the worst dinner ever.” A big grin would spread across her face as she leaned over to pat my head; my mom gets me. Because she cooked an amazing, well-balanced meal nearly every night, my siblings and I were consistently robbed of what we felt was the holy grail of eating: the frozen TV dinner.

Research from the University of Miami provides an alternative to commonly held beliefs on why we are drawn to high calorie foods and insight into the continued popularity of high fat food since the great recession. Stress, not piggishness, may trigger the choice of the double cheeseburger instead of the grilled chicken salad. We talk to Tony Salerno, a PhD candidate and co-author of the paper “Life-History Strategy, Food Choice, and Caloric Consumption” to get the skinny on the link between stress and food choices.

In gentile Savannah, Georgia, traditional southern food remains a somewhat sacred rite. That devotion has made Mrs. Wilkes dining room a place of worship. The former boarding house, now restaurant, offers a relaxed atmosphere and an   abundance of home-cooked pleasure.  But,as Emily Corwin reports for our Shifting the Balance series, the way the food is served can make the difference between over-indulgence, and a satisfying, healthy intake.