March is a month of change. For more than half the United States, winter cold begins yielding to spring warmth, albeit sometimes slower than we’d like! Farms and forests start to spring to life with new growth and color. Baseball fans (like me) tune into spring training games as we watch our favorite teams get ready for the upcoming season.
Times of transition can also bring challenges. Shifts in careers, relationships – or maybe also the recognition of unmet new year’s resolutions – can introduce feelings of doubt. Can we handle this change? Many of us reach for “comfort foods” to soothe feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. We want to attend to our emotions and feed our brain, the most energy-demanding organ in the body and one that controls how we think and feel.
Ice cream, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, pizza, mashed potatoes … these foods make us feel good because they tap into emotions, memories, and even the brain. Like other pleasurable activities, eating comfort food stimulates the brain’s reward center and its “feel-good” chemicals. Beyond biology, comfort foods also bring familiarity and connection: often, a remembrance of childhood or happy times in our lives.
Often considered not the healthiest of foods, comfort foods don’t have to be bad for you, especially given so many current options to mix up traditional favorites. There are delicious, healthy ways to make mac and cheese, for example. There are mini versions of frozen yogurt or ice cream concoctions – eating yummy food in smaller portions. Combining multiple foods together can pack taste and health. Açaí bowls, for example, join a healthy tropical berry with banana or other fruits, granola, fruit, and honey – delivering lots of flavor, protein, and healthy fats.
Leaning into healthy comfort eating can have benefits for both our physical and mental health. So why not be intentional about it? We can re-train our brains to seek out healthy comfort food not just as a reaction to stress in the moment but as a positive, long-term strategy for wellness.
You might be thinking: well that sounds nice, but is it really true that food affects mood? Yes. Although we still have a lot yet to learn, some intriguing studies have made this connection. Take, for example, results of the SMILES Trial, short for Supporting the Modification of lifestyle in Lowered Emotional States. One of the first studies to look directly at the effect of diet on mental health, this research found significant reductions in depression symptoms from dietary support. Another study showed that eating whole-foods, nuts, and olive oil (and added fish oil) improved both physical health and mental health in people with depression. Mental health conditions are indeed complex and multifactorial, but it does appear that food may play a role. But how? What’s the biology? What are the mechanisms? Well, those are just a few of the questions our Office would like to explore.
Some have termed this emerging area of science “nutritional psychiatry,” harnessing brain energy as a natural way to improve mental health with food. It makes sense intuitively, but there are lots of details to work out. As I wrote about a few months ago, the Nutrition Continuum relates the food environment to food ingredients to food-related behaviors. Embracing the complexities of this whole person approach to health, including the close connection between food and mood, inspires a wide range of research projects for modern nutrition science to figure out. That includes finding practical ways to put effective food-is-mood strategies into the daily lives of Americans.
It is March, and that means it is National Nutrition Month®. All of us, like the sluggers in spring training aiming for a World Series win, know that we perform best when we pay attention to both body and mind. Just as we work to develop new or improved workout habits for our bodies, research shows you also feel how you eat. But how? And why? This is where the ONR principles of nutrition as a biological variable and the nutritional ecology come into play and can be applied to advance our understanding of these dynamic interrelationships. How exactly can we modify those factors that influence our choices to allow us to move to “healthier” comfort foods? What roles do nutrients and other bioactive substances in food play in the biology of choice and mental well-being? If we can retrain our brains to build a bridge that connects comfort food to being healthy, imagine the power of developing lifelong eating habits that embrace the kinds of comfort food that support and benefit our physical and mental health.
One of ONR’s goals is to support the science that can provide the evidence base to address these important questions and inform the design of new foods and decisions about the future of our food supply. Nutrition is the link between the foods we eat and our overall health. By knowing the underlying biology that supports our physical and mental strength, our food and food choices can steer us toward a lifetime of wellness.
As always, I welcome comments, feedback, and suggested new directions for nutrition science research. If you’re on LinkedIn, feel free to share your favorite healthy snack or recipe with me – I’m always looking to expand my cookbook! Until next time, please visit the ONR website to get office-related information, and consider signing up to the ONR Updates list to receive monthly emails (including the Drew’s Views blog and the ONR Director’s Updates newsletter).
Nutrition Is Who We Are!
Drew Bremer
March 5, 2025