When the Economy Turns Sour, People Turn to Sweets

Recession or no recession, when Millie Moya is depressed, she buys chocolate. She is “thinking hard about going on vacation” and said buying a car was out of the question. But she won’t give up chocolate, because “a little comfort is good--and chocolate is affordable.”

Millie Moya is not alone. Americans consumed 11 pounds of “comfort” per capita in 1990, and some retailers and industry experts expect the figure to swell, despite the recession.

In a survey sponsored last year by American Health magazine and the Campbell Soup Co., more than half of the 1,026 respondents listed candy, ice cream and chocolate as their favorite comfort foods, and 42% indicated that they eat them when depressed.

Comfort foods, said Judy Knipe, co-author of the “Holiday Cookies Cookbook,” make people feel good when times are hard. And when they are trying to cut costs, they want familiar foods, not exotic ones, she said.

Because comfort foods remind many people of their childhoods, the foods that soothe differ with each person. Some are thrilled with homemade cookies while others like eating mushy foods, like mashed potatoes.

Food is nurturing because “it’s the one thing that’s always there no matter how terrible things get. It’s a stabilizer,” said Geneen Roth, author of “When Food Is Love” and three other books about people’s relationships with food.

People turn to sweets, she said, because they literally need sweetness in their lives. But people looking for love won’t get it from chocolate.

Although it does contains phenelethylamine, a chemical that reputedly enhances romantic feelings, the popular theory that eating chocolate will produce the euphoria associated with falling in love doesn’t hold water.

“An old wives’ tale,” said Natalie Bailey of the Hershey Foods Corp. Hershey found that chocolate contains less of the highly touted substance than either Cheddar cheese or pepperoni. Anyone looking to change their mood with chocolate would have to eat massive amounts.

During the 1981-82 recession, candy consumption rose from 16.1 pounds per capita to 16.7. But between 1985 and 1986, when the economic boom of the 1980s was in full swing, consumption dropped from 19.1 to 18.4 pounds per capita. That fall can’t be attributed just to an ongoing preoccupation with health and slimness.