This is a guest post by pediatrician, author, and childhood obesity specialist, Dr. Robert A. Pretlow.

I was fixing dinner the other night with the TV going in the background. I vaguely caught the end of a commercial. Did I hear what I thought I heard? “What comfort tastes like?” What the heck? That commercial has since aired multiple times. It depicts loving families, children and their parents, smiling and hugging each other, all sampling Werther’s caramel chocolates. The scenes are absolutely harmonious and idyllic.

So, what’s the problem? Well, for one thing the message seems to be, “If you buy these chocolates and share them with your children, a loving family will result.” You’re probably saying, “That’s what advertisers do: try to convince you that their products will make your life wonderful.” Yet, people who believe that about food might tend to overeat and gain weight.

But there’s a deeper, deliberate issue here. Madison Avenue is increasingly marketing to children, and this is a perfect example. The commercial equates Werther’s chocolates with the feeling of comfort that children receive from loving parents. Plus, it airs on family channels, like Lifetime and Hallmark, during times when children, and their parents, typically watch TV. The narrator says, “It’s magic…you don’t just taste it, you feel it…it’s a comfort.”

Where in the world would an advertising firm get an idea like this? It’s obvious that they understand the power of highly pleasurable food, that sweet confections, like chocolate and caramel, soothe the emotional pains of life. There have been several of these types of commercials. Milky Way had the slogan “Comfort in Every Bar” and a commercial featuring a guy rejected by a gal and comforted by a Milky Way bar. Pepperidge Farm has chimed in with their comforting cookie commercials. And at Christmas, McDonald’s promoted the “Comfort and Joy” of Chicken McNuggets.

We don’t feel pleasure and pain at the same time. Our brains are unable to focus on more than one emotion simultaneously. Hence, chocolate and caramel do actually displace emotional pain, at least temporarily. What’s not to like about that? Well, some people use this as a form of self-medication, for anxiety, stress, depression, loneliness, or boredom. The side effect of extra calories may result in unwanted weight gain. Being overweight typically produces a certain degree of distress, thus creating a vicious cycle.

We currently have a childhood obesity epidemic on our hands, with dire social and health consequences. Might comfort eating be a significant cause of this epidemic? Thousands of kids, who’ve posted messages on a website for overweight teens and preteens, seem to indicate so. As a 17-year-old girl (5’4″, 184 lbs.) agonized, “I’m soooo aggravated with myself. I want/need to lose weight and yet ill just keep eating those choc bars to numb whatever feelings I have at that moment.”

Children initially eat highly pleasurable food, e.g. junk food, simply because “it’s there,” and it tastes good. But once their brains realize that emotional pain is eased by the pleasure of the food, such comfort eating will be repeated and may become a serious dependence, which the children are unable to stop. This is not unlike dependencies on tobacco, alcohol, or even drugs, and actual brain changes may take place. As a 13-year-old girl (5’6″, 177 lbs.) bewailed, “I hate when I comfort eat… I DON’T KNOW HOW TO STOP. IT’S KILLING ME.”

As a matter of fact, the way these youth describe their relationship with highly pleasurable food satisfies nearly all of the DSM-IV substance dependence (addiction) criteria of the American Psychiatric Association, and only three out of six criteria are required for establishment of a dependence. A 14-year-old girl (5’2″, 201 lbs.) even described tolerance: “It’s like a drug. What used to satisfy you before now has no effect. I feel like I’ve become immune to the foods that used to comfort me. And like drugs you keep moving on to bigger, worse things in order to get the same feeling as when you started out.” Many kids — when bored, stressed, or depressed — use highly pleasurable food as a “drug of comfort” that is more acceptable than alcohol and drugs of abuse and is much, much more accessible.

A center called Shades of Hope, located in Buffalo Gap, Texas, specializes in “eating disorders and co-occurring addictions.” They describe the problem this way: “Food is used as medication to control and suppress negative feelings such as sadness, anger, depression, anxiety, loneliness or boredom.” Oprah Winfrey will be profiling Shades of Hope in her upcoming TV series, Addicted to Food.

Imagine if a commercial for beer or wine promoted the product as a cure for stress or anxiety. Alcoholic dependence would be an inherent risk. Are commercials, which promote highly pleasurable food as comforting, any different in regard to obesity risk?

The take home message for food companies is, “Quit it with those %@#! comfort food commercials!”

Your feedback and responses are welcome!

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Dr. Robert A. Pretlow has been researching and spreading awareness about childhood obesity for over a decade. He is the author of the new book, OVERWEIGHT: What Kids Say, which explores the childhood obesity epidemic from the perspective of overweight and obese kids. He has two websites, Childhood Obesity News and Weigh2Rock. You can follow him on Twitter: @ObesityBlog.

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