Name: Comfort Food - 6 Minute English
Uploaded: 2021-01-07T19:00:24.000Z
Duration: 6 min 18 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.

I see you've been tucking into the biscuits again, Rob.

You can't beat a bite on a biscuit for a quick and easy sweet treat.

They make me feel good – as long as I don't eat too many!

So, these are your 'edible comforters' – a comforter is something that makes you feel

Put another way, it is your comfort food,

which is what we're talking about in this programme.

Yes, like biscuits – comfort food is snacks and meals

we like to stuff our faces with, even if it's not always good for us.

We'll be discussing what actually makes us eat the stuff.

But how about a question to feast on, Rob?

Patrick Bertoletti from the USA holds the Guinness World Record

for eating the most cream-filled biscuits in one minute,

but do you know how many biscuits he ate?

Well, based on my biscuit-eating skills, I'd say 15 –

it depends if he had to swallow them all as well.

I'm not sure about that – but I'll reveal the answer later on.

Now, biscuits, ice cream, crisps and pizzas

They're easy to snack on and they don't require many culinary skills –

Umm, well that makes sense, but there must be something else

that is urging us to seek out this 'easy' food?

According to psychologist Shira Gabriel, it's about memories

She spoke on The Food Chain podcast on BBC World Service

and said her comfort food was macaroni and cheese –

At some point in my life those were foods that were made

for me or shared with me by people who cared about me and loved me

and took care of me, so because those are the foods

that I had in my youth, I've associated with them, sort of,

And those associations are strong, the associations we have with

food are very strong, and so by eating those foods, I'm able

to activate those associations and give myself a rush of

positive feelings and a sense of acceptance.

… so like so many of us, Shira associates eating certain types of food

Associates means makes a connection in your mind with something.

And these connections between food and memories are very strong.

I know eating biscuits reminds me of eating them after school, as a treat.

Well, Shira explains how we get a rush – a sudden and strong emotion –

of positive feelings when these memories are activated

And it's not just memories that are activated,

If we felt happy the first time we ate the food,

then hopefully we'll feel happy when we eat it again.

Tucking into food that's high in carbohydrates, sugar or salt

can make us feel guilty, but we don't realise our minds are trying to trigger – or start -

a positive emotion, and it's making us eat that food to do so.

The Food Chain podcast explores this in more detail –

but what is interesting is that comfort food isn't universal.

Some languages don't have a comparable phrase.

It's a good point and something food writer Jenny Linford talked about.

Talking to Italian friends, I realised that, no, they don't have a

phrase for 'comfort food' – I think it's sort of irrelevant….

My Italian friends I asked about comfort food, they were just, they said to me,

look you know, food is always comfort and always pleasure

and it's a joyful thing, so it's just really interesting that you know

this idea of comfort food is not universal, it's actually quite nuanced.

So, according to Jenny's Italian friends, all food brings comfort

Talking about specific comforting food is irrelevant –

it is not important or has no connection with the discussion.

Yes, she thinks the concept of comfort food is quite nuanced,

depending on where you are from – so there are small

Well, maybe we should take comfort from - or feel less bad about –

the fact that eating any kind of food can bring us joy,

So if you don't mind, I think I'll munch on another biscuit.

Are you trying to beat the record of Patrick Bertoletti from the USA?

Earlier I mentioned he holds the Guinness World Record for

eating the most cream-filled biscuits in one minute,

No, Rob. He scoffed only 7 in one minute.

But before you do, let's recap on some of the vocabulary

Of course. We've been talking about comfort food –

food that makes us feel good – and we described it as a 'comforter' -

something that makes us feel relaxed and feel good.

We also mentioned culinary – connected to cooking.

And associated – which means made a connection in our mind with something.

Something that is irrelevant is not important or has no connection