Browsing by Subject "Lohturuoka"

The aim of the study was to find out how the subjects define and understand the concept of comfort food and the situations which comfort food is associated to. The goal was also to find out whether study participants find it actually comforting to eat comfort food. The purpose was also to describe and analyze how the meanings given to comfort food are attached to different aspects of the food relations framework as defined by Talvia and Anglé (2018). Previous comfort food studies have shown that the comfort food phenomenon is difficult to define because of its ambiguity and the subjective experience of every individual. The study was conducted as a qualitative study. The research material was collected using an electronic questionnaire. Electronic questionnaire was implemented with Google Forms -platform and it was shared on the Järvenpää Facebook group as well as on WhatsApp with my own contacts. A total of 109 people responded to the electronic questionnaire. From Google Forms the questionnaire responses were transferred to Excel for analysis. Research material was analyzed using content analysis. Participants in the study were familiar with the concept of comfort food as it was defined using words and terms similar to those in the previous comfort food studies. The situationality of comfort food appeared as taking care of the close ones, experiences of nostalgia and loneliness, reward, food and eating-related classification, at special moments and in a disturbed food relationship related situation. The responses of many study participants also indicated that they found the comfort food comforting. Based on the results, it can be stated that the emotions play a significant role in the context of comfort food. Comfort food is often associated with emotional eating, which deals with different emotions. Through the different components of the food relation framework it can be seen that comfort food is also related to an individual's general relationship to food.