Table Talk

by Tamara Kaye Sellman

Our Year of Comfort Food may be America’s way of paying tribute to this ancient Chinese proverb.

Evidence of the popular resurgence of comfort food can be found everywhere: Twitter, message boards, online polls, social network conversations, advertising, television programming, and book publishing. It’s human nature, after all, to fall into the comfort of familiar things during times of economic uncertainty and societal distress. Comfort food is easy and affordable therapy.

On its face, it also seems downright smart and wholesome. Who can honestly demonize ideals like value and homegrown and potluck and scratch cooking and one dish meals?

Except that most of these foods have carbs and fats in common.

Of course they do. Carbs and fats are cheap and filling, just the ticket for easing the Slow Economy Blues.

* * *

I did an informal online survey of favorite comfort foods and arrived at this mouthwatering menu of culinary delights:

Chicken Pot Pie, Pasta Alfredo, Pierogies, Rice-A-Roni®, Poutine, Pizza,

Chocolate, Ice Cream, Gravy, Chips and Dip, Macaroni and Cheese, Fried

Chicken, Cupcakes, Meatloaf, Hot Dogs

Can you taste it, the emotional conveyance of satisfaction and security in these foods? In fact, psychologists and diet experts will say that we’re, in fact, hard-wired at childhood to make these bad choices. That it’s a conspiracy on par with tobacco sales.

Hard-core dieters, of course, snub such ideas and try to convince us instead that Caesar salad, broiled fish, gazpacho and baked kale chips are more satisfying, that it’s all about willpower.

But who would win in a contest?

* * *

Enter the Death Match: Comfort Foods versus Diet Foods!

I’ll test representative three-part menus from both camps in various real-life situations to see which reigns supreme. Let your own judgment decide the winner, but ultimately, it’s the popular choice that determines which side can honestly claim victory.

Introducing the Menus! In this corner, Comfort Foods! Double Bacon Cheeseburger! French Fries with a Side of Ranch! And Browwwwww-nie Sundae!

And in this corner, Diet Foods! Grilled Halibut with Roasted Pepper-Basil Sauce! Caesar Salad with Low-Fat Dressing! And Sugar-Free JELL-O!

Let the games begin! Round One! You lost your job. Which menu do you choose?

Comfort Foods: I could eat this cheaply at any fast food burger joint. Or I could buy cheap ground beef and make my own burgers. Frozen French fries and bottled ranch dressing are easy to come by and the kids will eat them. Box brownies are quick to make for under $2, or I could just buy the darned things at the store, glob on ice cream and Hershey syrup, et voila! Easy, cheap and filling. My family will love me!

Diet Foods: Have you seen the price of halibut these days? Red bell peppers and basil, too, and still, I would have to roast, peel and puree the peppers into a sauce with the basil. What about the jumbo clamshell of fresh basil at the store, too expensive for handful of leaves I need? The rest will rot in my fridge. Fine, sugar-free JELL-O is cheap enough, but one serving isn’t enough, and I don’t feed artificial sweeteners to my kids anyway…

Round Two! Your investment portfolio is in a shambles. Which menu do you choose?

Comfort Foods: I can no longer pay for my kids’ college education because those funds went down the toilet last fall. I can no longer afford retirement because those funds went down the toilet last fall. I can no longer afford to live at all because I lost my job and I no longer have my investments to sustain me because those funds went down the toilet last fall. What to do? Avoid Chinese food for dinner! I’ll be hungry after an hour-depressing! Instead, I’ll eat for cheap entertainment! A cheeseburger, fries and brownie will lift my mood like a spendy comedy nightclub act with a two-drink minimum… but for pennies on the dollar!

Diet Foods: Ummm, ditto Round One results. Plus, cooking from scratch is too hard after a day of looking for a job. All I want to do is sleep. (Dibs on the soft corner of the couch with the fluffy pillow.)

Round Three! Your brother moved in with you after losing his job last February. Which menu do you choose?

Comfort Foods: Cheeseburgers, again. Uncle Buddy and the kids love ‘em and I can’t afford custom meal planning to keep everyone happy. Let’s just stick with the same cheap, filling meal. Maybe Uncle Buddy will get bored with the hospitality and move on.

Diet Foods: Ummm, ditto Round One results. Plus, my kids are complaining that every time I bring a case of Sugar-Free JELL-O home from the box store, it disappears into the basement, where Uncle Buddy watches game shows 24-7.

So you tell me… which menu reigns supreme?

* * *

It always comes down to economics and emotions.

Cheap food is inviting, it makes us temporarily happy, it’s easier to acquire and it has mass appeal. Cheap carbs and fat will always prevail over diet plans in a slow economy.

Maybe the word diet should be stricken from the American vocabulary. Diets, in the medical sense, are regimens: dispassionate records of what we eat. But in a social sense, diets are restrictions requiring special behaviors, money, planning.

I tried Atkins. It worked. I lost weight. And yet it didn’t work. My cholesterol shot past 200, my blood pressure went up. I didn’t like eating so much meat, and I wasn’t a daily bacon connoisseur; I ate a lot of broccoli, nuts, and romaine lettuce. I like strawberries and don’t see anything wrong with eating a banana occasionally; I think they’re still healthier choices than expensive squares of sugar-free Belgian chocolate.

Plus, let’s face it, meat costs money.

The South Beach Diet is a little more reasonable, but you can’t lose weight by cutting carbs alone. You have to reduce calories and portions, increase your exercise.

I also realized halfway into South Beach that it’s not diet concepts that I resist. I resist more projects. Life in the 21^st Century is nothing if not a series of perpetual learning curves: in work, in play, in relationships, in personal growth.

Why can’t eating be the one thing in our lives that doesn’t require a strategy?

I remain devoted to a simple, whole foods approach to cooking. And silly me, I think it’s possible to enjoy comfort food that’s healthy. Just figure out what you like that’s good for you. I crave sautéed vegetable sandwiches and smoothies composed of fresh fruit and low-fat kefir. Frozen grapes can be comforting; so are apple slices with peanut butter. A scrambled egg on whole-grain toast is not exactly a sin; oatmeal with raisins and walnuts? Definitely sinless.

What is a sin is our need to overcomplicate our lives with solutions for eating that really are as simple (and as affordable) as eschewing pre-packaged, boxed, canned, or prepared foods for things we make from scratch. Even choosing to mash your own potatoes instead of pouring flakes out of a box puts you ahead of the game.

That may be the only way we avoid our own, collective death match.

-30-

Rice-A-Roni is a registered trademark of the The Quaker Oats Company.

JELL-O is a registered trademark of Kraft Foods, Inc.

Bio: Tamara Kaye Sellman is a creative writing coach and developmental editor living in Bainbridge Island, WA. She writes the blog, BuzzFood: Feed The Obsession (http://buzzfood.blogspot.com).

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!