Three comfort foods that aren't really

A friend tweeted a few days back that junk food always left her craving for more #frenchfries #fried food.

I tweeted back: That's 'coz they r a perfect (read bad) combination of salt+sugar+fat (all in excess) which excite not just our taste buds but our brain too.

There, nailed the story of comfort cravings in 140 characters.

Comfort food as a phrase gets thrown about rather carelessly, and the foods we turn to are often pretty (pun intended) wrong choices, causing more harm than good.

Junk food tops the list

"There's nothing that a good cheesy, dripping with fat burger can't cure". Often heard. Right? The fact is that most of the junk food out there is designed, deliberately to provide maximum sensory satisfaction, beginning right from the first delicious crunch, moving on to melt in the mouth texture, to the "umami" flavour they target to deliver, and of course a carefully curated assortment of feel good ingredients. Food scientists in these companies work on a clear cut brief: to nail an addictive "combination" of unputdownable texture, taste, smell and looks… Yes, they consciously construct foods that "create" cravings. Health obviously is not even supposed to be in the picture at any stage - so it isn't.

But junk foods, however satisfying they may seem, are the last foods to try and de-stress with, especially when we already know about their generous contribution towards genesis of multiple lifestyle disorders. And now with reports coming in that they could fan depression too (yes!), it's actually double jeopardy to try and seek any kind of comfort from them.

Don't get too sweet on sweets

We all know that… A rasogulla (or a few) can actually make us forget what's stressing us, at least for a bit. So we indulge. Again and again. There's science behind it apparently. A new study published in April has found that eating sugar tends to reduce levels of stress hormone cortisol (scientists found reduced blood flow to areas of the brain involved in fear and stress), so the metabolic pathway connecting sugar and the brain is getting clearer now. But that said this is not the suggested path to take. Simply because excess sugar is utterly damaging to the body (you know that already), and the biggest negative payback to be wary of is that sugar is out-and-out addictive, and sugar cravings are awfully hard to break. Too big a price to pay for a tiny dot of comfort.

Alcohol buzz doesn't last

While it's true that drinking a little can loosen you up, lift your mood and make troubles recede (at least make them seem so), but in fact instead of calming, alcohol actually adds up troubles for your body and mind both. It causes metabolic havoc (metabolising it taxes too many organs), and disrupts the brains balance, affecting your thoughts, emotions and actions.

Alcohol actually has a two pronged effect: it increases the release of dopamine in the reward centre of the brain, which tricks you into thinking that you are feeling great, while in the background it messes with the neurotransmitters and enhances feelings of depression (suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and increases the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA). Also with time the dopamine effect diminishes, while the other adds up, playing up alcohol's depressive effect.

Plus looking forward to a drink to help relieve your stress, is actually a warning sign - as you could be moving towards alcohol dependency. And stress of dependency can be far greater than most other stressers life throws at us.

Doesn't really sound like a comfort food now, does it!

By the way there are other ways to secure comfort - exercise, yoga, meditation, music, all these stimulate neurochemicals that activate regions of the brain that boost pleasure. Or maybe all you need is to just curl up and sleep a little more, instead of trying to get a hug out of a plate (or a glass).