by Stuart Leopold

Created on: November 27, 2007   Last Updated: November 28, 2007

No Comfort- In Comfort Foods

Here is the scenario: I've just had a bad day. No, not just a bad day, but a day that will live forever in psychological history as the day my personal human condition came to a screeching halt and flew like a brick through the windshield of my psyche. Got the picture?

I had a fight to end all fights with my children who have since requested that they be let out of my will for fear that they would have any indebitness to me even after I've left this earth. My wife who has assured me that if I had any less talent as a parent I could qualify for parental urban renewal and that it is probably best that I change my name and move to Dubuque, Iowa where nobody knows me, nor for that matter would anybody care. Finally I found out that my business partner has begun using the company bank accounts as a source of income for funding his trips to the Cayman Islands where he deposits the money hes appropriated from the sales department in a numbered account under an assumed name. Wow, it doesn't get any better than this, does it?

What do I do? Do I turn my back on my family? Do I run to the arms of a strange and willing woman who will lie to me and tell me I'm the next Mel Gibson, or do I barricade myself in my kitchen and arm myself with the contents of a well-stocked refrigerator. You guessed right. I assuage my pain with FOOD! Just like 33% of Americans, I run to the loving arms of a friendly and willing Twinkie. No not the blonde variety, but the cake variety that has the ability to make anything bad disappear for a few moments. Then if I'm not ecstatic by this point I will ravage the contents of a bag of salty potato chips until my lips are dry and chapped. Then I'll wash it all down with a quart of chocolate ice cream. Yes, for most folks, the real comfort we seek when life throws little stones our way is from food.

In the short term, the food we consume in amazingly large quantities in order to camouflage our angst, does, in fact, make us feel pretty good for a while. Sadly though, in the long term, the initial rush of satisfaction we got from gorking down that iddy biddy seven layer chocolate cake is replaced with the shame we feel for having indulged ourselves along with the realization that we have just gained weight and have to spend twice the amount of time and effort to lose that weight. Sometimes, you simply cannot catch a break!

What is the mechanism behind our rush to food when the going gets tough? Why do we feed our bodies

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