How Food Brings Happiness: The Joy of Eating

^{Photo by Chris Benson}

Knowing how food brings happiness is a positive experience that a lot of get to experience, but we end up being somewhat oblivious to it happening.

Kenny Harmon, author of Sad Papaw, is aware of how powerful food can be. Though unrelated to food, his other book, Sad Papaw’s Heritage, details the memories he treasures the most and shares them with others. It’s like a biography, but on a deeper and personal level—it’s like actually hearing your grandpa retell his life near the fireplace.

With Kenny, it’s all about the happy times and connecting with people. Today, we’ll be taking a look at how food can bring us joy and connect us with others, the same way that it did for Sad Papaw himself!

Certain Food Provides Us With Serotonin and Dopamine

Depression and low serotonin levels have been related. Well-known antidepressants work by increasing serotonin levels. Tryptophan is a crucial amino acid needed for the production of serotonin. The body cannot create serotonin if tryptophan is absent.

Foods high in protein are rich in tryptophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid generated when several other amino acids combine to form a protein. It makes sense to believe that eating foods that have lots of protein will keep you happy because protein contains a lot of tryptophan. Regretfully, that is untrue.

More than twenty amino acids are discharged during protein digestion, and they compete with one another to enter the brain. During the process, tryptophan is lost. The only food that will raise tryptophan levels—which serve as a precursor to serotonin—is an all-carb snack.

Foods Are also Embedded In Our Customs of Happiness

Every culture has traditions related to food. When there was a special event in my childhood, we would use our meager resources to purchase unique foods because money was tight. It indicated that we were receiving preferential treatment. Selecting a special dinner, cake, and ice cream flavor (all within budget) was customary on birthdays.

Food was brought to the grieving during funerals. This topic is of particular interest because of funeral rituals. The food is presented with a lot of love and care, and nothing is maliciously meant. It is, nevertheless, only more evidence that we should eat to “feel better.”

This is one of the many ways on how food brings happiness. In a similar manner, Kenny is trying to spread happiness with his book Sad Papaw’s Heritage, the same way he did with his burgers. A food that many people consider “comfort food” further reinforces our connection with food and “feeling good.”

Behavioral Conditioning Also Plays a Factor

Knowing how we become conditioned to respond a certain way to stimuli when we are exposed to them repeatedly is a key to understanding the relationship between food and behavior. In this instance, we believe that eating cakes, cookies, and the like makes us “feel better” (the response), as we have been constantly told that food can make us feel better (the stimuli).

What we overlook, though, is the additional stimulus—the love, care, and concern that accompanied the food and the feelings it evoked in us. Put another way, we might have linked our reaction—feeling better—to the incorrect stimulus—food—instead of the stimulus that truly improved our mood—the love we experienced.

Perhaps happiness is not something that food can provide. Perhaps it is the recollection of these individuals showing us their love and concern. Perhaps that’s what brings us true happiness. Patients frequently tell doctors that they eat when they’re bored, lonely, or depressed. They’re looking for solace.

People eat because it provides a physical outlet for their desire to feel “full” or “satisfied.” But the real solace they seek lies not in fat or carbohydrates, but in a sense of community, in relating to people, in being inspired and feeling creative.

How Food Brings Happiness Matters

Some may think of it as a trivial thing, but knowing how food brings joy to people is very important. By knowing the intricacies of such a phenomenon, we can continue to provide ourselves and others with delicious dishes. We can give them meals that will fill their bellies with satisfaction and their hearts with glee.

If you wish to know more about sharing happiness, not just through food, then buy Sad Papaw’s Heritage by Kenny Harmon. You can get the book via his website at https://www.sadpapawbooks.net/order/.

Read some of our other blog posts as well and find out why eating comfort food makes us feel so good!