The wellbeing column: Food can bring us comfort through lockdown and beyond – so why deny it?

*This article contains a general discussion of food, restriction and disordered eating*
Few things are more essential, currently, than comfort. As England goes into a second national lockdown, it is perfectly understandable that you may be stressed, afraid, and in need of reassurance. Often, one of the ways that this anxiety manifests is in anxiety around food.  
In many childhoods, food is framed as a vehicle for comfort. The message is clearly sent, from personal experience, film and television: if we are sad or hurt as children, a sweet treat will cheer us up. 
As we get older, this message persists on screen. Whether it is the iconic ‘pizza in Italy’ moment with Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love, or Bridget Jones’s forlorn, heartbroken dive into the ice cream tub, food is represented as the end of sadness, and a means of stepping into a better feeling. In other words, food is a comfort. 
That is, on screen and in theory.
In practice, within society, harmful messages surround ‘comfort food’, i.e. the simple act of using food to comfort ourselves. As we move away from the childhood message that food will make us feel better, we are propelled towards a world where control over food is both encouraged and admired. It says a lot about how society moves us away from listening to our own bodies, when ‘how to eat intuitively’ is a question which needs to be asked. 
We are born knowing what our bodies need, through regulatory systems such as the hunger and fullness signals, as well as a feeling of desire for food. Yet we are bombarded with messages which pull us away from this place of trust within ourselves, in our own body, in what our body needs and how it is perfectly unique, and not supposed to look or be like anybody else’s.
I would like to make the claim, particularly during a winter of uncertainty around so many things, that we can take back this powerful tool from being something which is framed as negative, and transform it into something comforting again. Food can soothe us, in adulthood, as it did when we were younger. 
Routine – whether it is eating, hygiene, getting some air, or movement – is our most basic resource to make ourselves feel better. Even when all other activities are stripped away, whether through government Covid restrictions or by difficult periods of mental or physical health, making the basic tasks of our everyday life more enjoyable becomes a tool of comfort and power. 
We cannot know what we will be doing in four weeks’ time, after this period of lockdown comes to an end, but we can decide what we might enjoy cooking and eating, today and tomorrow.