The Mood in Food
I think it is fair to say we all have, or know someone who has, cried through a pint of ice cream or a bag of chips, just to feel better about that breakup or failed test. Food is comforting. It can also cause shame and guilt after you begin to see the bottom of the pint or the crumbs in the bag. Food makes us feel a plethora of emotions. Some are not so good feelings, like the now popular term “food baby”, and some can be the complete opposite, like how oysters and chocolate are thought to be aphrodisiacs. I have chosen three podcasts taking on different aspects of food and its effects on the way we feel. One is about feeling shameful and being judged based on meals, another is on cravings and the brain, and the last is about sex; the ways in which foods heighten the sexual libido. As a psychology major, and someone interested in emotions and the connection between the body and mind, I chose podcasts focused on emotions to further expand my interests into other subjects, this one being food.
There are certain stigmas associated with what we eat and how we eat it. The first podcast I listened to, “Sweet, Salty, Bitter, Sour: The Emotional Life of Eating” (Gravy Ep. 5), included multiple personal stories about experiences of feeling shame or guilt relating to food. After an intro with background music, anonymous individuals read each story as if it were their own. One by one with no transition other than a different voice, people told of some negative experiences. One story that really caught my attention was about this woman’s daughter who was one of a handful of white students at her school. She had eaten school lunches until one day she came home wanting to take a lunch from home. Her reason was because everyone else “her color” ate lunches from home. She felt she didn’t fit in just because of the food she was eating.
Another story read was told about someone who brought home a soup from visiting their mother in another country. The soup was spicy and contained pig’s feet, a favorite of the author, and a traditional meal of their family. Rachel Hertz’s article, “That’s Disgusting: Unraveling The Mysteries of Repulsion”, mentions cultural learning and the ways we come to find things gross. She states, “we learn which foods are disgusting and which are not through our cultural heritage”, which explains what happened when the pig soup was brought back to the United States (Hertz, 7). The author describes the people’s looks of horror when they saw what he was eating. Various questions and statements of unbelief made the author feel “attacked”. It’s not so much foods, but the sometimes negative reactions to what people eat and the cultural norms around food, that put shame and guilt into what we eat.
Getting the negative feelings out of the way, there are also positive feelings that come from food. The second podcast I listened to, “This Is Your Brain On Cheesesteak” (The Sporkful), visits Philadelphia and more importantly, Philly foods. The speaker tries three popular foods from the area and brings up the question about why we enjoy these foods so much. What about them makes us crave and want more, even if sometimes we eat so much of it that we start to feel sick. Michael Moss gives a little insight to this phenomenon in his article, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”. Talking about flavors and the brain, Moss states “[big] hits owe their success to complex formulas… enough to be alluring but don’t have [an]… overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.”
Conversing with restaurant waitresses, the speaker asks about the foods that do just this to Philly residents. He even speaks to a doctor, who studies food cravings, about the texture of the foods he tries and why they are so desired. It has a lot to do with multiple textures in one, crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. The doctor gives an example of cereal and milk usually being favored before the cereal gets soggy so you get the nice crunch and the creamy milk all in one, something she calls “dynamic contrast”. It makes your brain go crazy for more. Certain foods make us feel so good, that we crave it more and more because of the flavors infused in the foods, and the way it affects our brains. The speaker ends the podcast with happy harmonica background tunes saying how full he was, but how listening to his podcast still made him hungry. It’s amazing how foods affect the way we feel, even when we just talk about them.
A sort of taboo in some places, but also a fun and interesting topic is how sexual feelings may also be affected by the foods we eat. The third podcast I had the pleasure of listening to was called “The Food of Love”, a recording by Gastropod. A forty-minute mix of discussions, an interview with a food historian and sex shop manager, and experiments on aphrodisiac foods. Simple sound effect music drops into a story about a time when one of the hosts ate conch penis on a vacation overseas. An activity that the historian, Tasha Marks, explains was a popular thing to do back in the day. People believed that foods shaped like genitalia would enhance their own sexual parts, and even help with infertility. A very interesting concept that is still carried to today, though maybe not entirely with the same beliefs. Today, foods such as oysters, avocados, and chocolate, are considered to increase sexual arousal. The hosts of the podcast conclude that most “aphrodisiac” foods don’t have scientific evidence supporting this claim, but they did try some out for their own experience.
Brought into their home, you can hear one of the host’s husbands chopping garlic to put into a certain wine, a common historical aphrodisiac. More of a weird combination than a turn on, they didn’t get the experience that was intended. They also tried another aphrodisiac which resulted the same way. Many foods were talked about and debated upon whether or not they actually increased sexual arousal. Most don’t have the scientific support, but there were a few that actually might work; honey being one of the few (no wonder it’s called a honeymoon). The podcast concluded that foods as aphrodisiacs are more of a placebo than anything. People believe it will affect them, and their brain convinces them it does. Still, whether or not people believe in food aphrodisiacs, it is still very interesting that a simple food can heighten certain emotions, scientifically or psychologically.
We have learned many things about food including the ways in which it is made, and about the different people that eat it or don’t eat it. These three podcasts took a different route on food, but still tie into the subjects we have talked about. What some people find disgusting can put negative feelings on others. This is mostly because of the foods we grow up eating and what we are culturally used to, according to Rachel Hertz. Certain aspects of food, especially texture, can affect whether or not we crave for more. Some foods may or may not help with one’s sexual arousal. Three interesting topics that tackle some of the ways that food impacts the way we feel. Maybe next time you’re eating and your emotions start to change, you can just blame your mood on the food.
You can find the podcasts below:
Gravy - "Sweet, Salty, Bitter, Sour: The Emotional Life of Eating"
The Sporkful - "This Is Your Brain On Cheesesteak"
Gastropod - "The Food of Love"