Even if youâre currently in a happy relationship, at some point youâve probably experienced heartbreak, and many of us have been the stereotypical person grabbing a pint of ice cream out of the freezer to soothe our pain.
In 2004âs âEdge of Reasonâ film adaptation, Bridget Jones famously wrapped herself in a comforter and scooped up Ben & Jerryâs ice cream to chase away her love triangle blues. âScary Movie 3â took the image a step further when Anna Faris and Regina Hall ate from a colossal tub of ice cream. Whether itâs âThe Incrediblesââ Violet turning invisible and crying over a pint, âSNLâ host Emma Stone eating ice cream and crying while listening to Adele, Rory Gilmore âwallowingâ or powerhouse Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posting an Instagram story of enjoying Stephen Colbertâs Ben & Jerryâs Americone Dream after a long day of battling haters, most of the ice cream mollycoddling we see in pop culture focuses on women.
However, Chandler (Matthew Perry) in âFriendsâ broke the stereotype in season three (1996) of the series. Monica and Rachel offered him a tub of generic French vanilla, and he complained it âtastes like crap.â Rachel said, âYeah, well thatâs that low-cal, non-dairy, soy milk junk. We save the real stuff for the truly terminal cases.â And Monica added, âYou know, when you start getting screwed over all the time, you gotta switch to low-fat.â Today, theyâd be eating Halo Top.
Food psychologist Jen Bateman explains that one reason we rely on ice cream is because it stirs up nostalgia. âSpecific cravings are often linked to experiences of those foods in our past,â she told HuffPost. âPeople who were offered ice cream as a distraction when upset, or have positive associations of ice cream in the past, are more likely to crave it in the here and now.â
Besides happy childhood memories, where did this idea of eating ice cream when weâre sad come from, and does fat and sugar actually help us mitigate sadness?
Ashley Gearhardt, a University of Michigan associate professor of psychology and a clinical psychologist, performs research at the universityâs FAST (Food Addiction Science and Treatment) Lab. Her focus is on the association between highly processed junk foods and whether they trigger addictive properties similar to cigarettes and booze.
âOur brains are really set up to find highly caloric things rewarding,â Gearhardt told HuffPost. âIce cream has two of the ingredients that weâre engineered to have a big reward response to: fat and sugar. Weâve gotten so good at mass-producing these hyper-rewarding foods. Now itâs not just chocolate [ice cream that does it for us]. Itâs chocolate with chunks of marshmallow and fudge ripple in it.â
Although one study suggests ice cream makes people happy, Gearhardt mentioned a 2012 study that Kyle S. Burger and Eric Stice published in which they discovered people received limited contentment from the treat. They studied people who consumed ice cream-based chocolate milkshakes. While the participants drank the shake, the researchers ran fMRIs on their brain responses. The conclusion: âOur results provide novel evidence that frequent consumption of ice cream, independent of body fat, is related to a reduction in reward-region responsivity in humans, paralleling the tolerance observed in drug addiction.â Yes, drug addiction.
âIndividuals who were the most frequent consumers of chocolate ice cream got less reward-related brain responses than those who didnât eat it more frequently,â Gearhardt explained. (She was not involved in the study.) âThe idea thinking, that maybe the more youâre consuming something, your body adapts and becomes tolerant to it. You donât get as much bang for your buck as you used to, so maybe you need even sweeter ice cream or maybe more ice cream to get what youâre expecting to get.â
Once the âhighâ from the sugar subsided, Gearhardt said many people felt remorse. âYou get this one-two punch of youâre not in a great place, you have these emotional memories, you have expectations. Marketing and advertising tells us, âOh youâre feeling cranky, and a Snickers or ice cream, thatâs whatâs going to make you feel better.â We really encode these things, and when you eat it, it doesnât quite live up to the hype.â
Gearhardt said people not only feel regret but also nauseated and low-energy, and in order to achieve that hyper reward, theyâll turn to other snack foods, like potato chips, or even alcohol
Gearhardt suggested that women-eating-ice cream became ingrained in pop-culture maybe because men approach depression different than women do. âIf a guyâs really sad, or something bad has happened to him, we see in culture a lot of them going to the bar and drinking it away,â she said. âBut for women â this is changing, though [more women are abusing alcohol] â there were gender norms that alcohol and other drugs of abuse werenât appropriate for women to use to cope.â
âSome research suggests that women are more likely to use eating to numb, distract and soothe emotions,â Jessica Bihuniak, a dietitian and an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at New York University, told HuffPost.
Sandra Bullock satirized this idea in âMiss Congenialityâ (2000) and took âgive me a pintâ to a new level. As she sat at the bar, feeling down in the dumps and eating a burger, the bartender presented her with the âpintâ â a whole container of Ben & Jerryâs chocolate chip cookie dough (more product placement). âIâm gonna get shit-faced,â she joked.
âIf youâre not societally allowed to go to the bar and pour a whiskey and drink the pain away, then ice cream is the gendered-appropriate alternative,â Gearhardt said.
The first spoonful always tastes the best, but Gearhardt said the more ice cream you eat, the more it leads to diminishing returns, and it gets to the point where âI donât even taste it.â (In 2013, researchers at WĂŒrzburg University in Germany published a study on how sadness can mask our ability to taste fat.) âItâs not about the pleasure or joy or paying attention to the taste,â she said. âItâs almost like, Iâm kind of zoned out and just shoveling it in my mouth.â
Healthy foods like veggies and fruit can boost moods, but Gearhardt said the best way to manage sadness or heartache is to engage in a non-food activity, such as social support, exercising (Olivia Pope from âScandalâ and later season Don Draper from âMad Menâ swam laps) and reading a book. âI think throwing food at it, when youâre not hungry, is not going to fix the problem. So whether itâs carrots and apples or ice cream, at the end of the day youâre still probably going to still feel sad. Itâs OK to want to take care of yourself as long as itâs not a problem for people.â
Bihuniak echoed the non-food activity. âIn general, eating ice cream is completely fine and should be enjoyed, but I do not recommend using it as a coping strategy,â she said. âI donât believe people should depend on food to feel happy. ⊠In some cases, I have suggested using modeling clay or Play-Doh as a mood enhancer. Using our hands in a creative manner can be very rewarding.â
But to avoid problems like binge-eating and eating disorders, Gearhardt said people need to identify real expectations related to food. âWhat are the expectations people have about junk food and are they actually what theyâre experiencing? Those expectations can keep the behaviors going, and the more society shows Bridget Jones at home with her ice cream, it kind of influences those expectations.â