Comfort food is food prepared traditionally, that may have a nostalgic or sentimental appeal, or simply provide an easy-to-eat, easy-to-digest meal rich in calories, nutrients, or both. Comfort foods may be foods that have a nostalgic element either to an individual or a specific culture. Many comfort foods are flavorful and easily eaten, having soft consistencies.

Comfort foods may be consumed to positively pique emotions, to relieve negative psychological affects or to increase positive feelings. The term was first used, according toWebster's Dictionary, in 1977.

One study divided college-students' comfort-food identifications into four categories (nostalgic foods, indulgence foods,convenience foods, and physical comfort foods) with a special emphasis on the deliberate selection of particular foods to modify mood or affect, and indications that the medical-therapeutic use of particular foods may ultimately be a matter of mood-alteration.

The identification of particular items as comfort food may be idiosyncratic, though patterns are detectable. In one study of American preferences, "males preferred warm, hearty, meal-related comfort foods (such as steak, casseroles, and soup), while females instead preferred comfort foods that were more snack related (such as chocolate and ice cream). In addition, younger people preferred more snack-related comfort foods compared to those over 55 years of age." The study also revealed strong connections between consumption of comfort foods and feelings of guilt.

Comfort food consumption has been seen as a response to emotional stress, and consequently, as a key contributor to the epidemic of obesity in the United States. The provocation of specific hormonal responses leading selectively to increases in abdominal fat is seen as a form of self-medication.

Further studies suggest that consumption of comfort food is triggered in men by positive emotions, and by negative ones in women. The stress effect is particularly pronounced among college-aged women, with only 33% reporting healthy eating choices during times of emotional stress. For women specifically, these psychological patterns may be maladaptive.

A therapeutic use of these findings includes offering comfort foods or "happy hour" beverages to anorectic geriatric patients whose health and quality of life otherwise decreases with reduced oral intake.

COMFORT FOODS

PIZZA

Pizza , Italian pronunciation: [ˈpittsa]) is an oven-baked, flat, round bread typically topped with a tomato sauce, cheese and various toppings.

CAKE

Cake is a form of bread or bread-like food. In its modern forms, it is typically a sweet baked dessert.

Modern cake, especially layer cakes, normally contain a combination offlour, sugar, eggs, and butter or oil, with some varieties also requiring liquid (typically milk or water) and leavening agents (such as yeast orbaking powder). Flavorful ingredients like fruit purées, nuts, dried orcandied fruit, or extracts are often added, and numerous substitutions for the primary ingredients are possible. Cakes are often filled with fruit preserves or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercreamor other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders or candied fruit.

BURGER AND FRIES

BURGER

A hamburger (also called a hamburger sandwich, burger or hamburg) is a sandwich consisting of a cooked patty of ground meat usually placed inside a sliced bread roll. Hamburgers are often served with lettuce, bacon,tomato, onion, pickles, cheese and condiments such as mustard,mayonnaise, ketchup and relish.

The term "burger", can also be applied to the meat patty on its own, especially in the UK where the term "patty" is rarely used. The term may be prefixed with the type of meat as in "beef burger".

FRIES

French-fried potatoes are batons of deep-fried potato.North Americans refer to any elongated pieces of fried potatoes as fries, while in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland andNew Zealand, long, thinly cut slices of fried potatoes are often calledfries to distinguish them from the more thickly cut strips called chips(while potato chips are called crisps).^[4] French fries are known asfrites, patates frites or pommes frites in French, a name which is also used in many non-French-speaking areas, and have names that mean "fried potatoes" or "French potatoes" in others.