Additionally, the winter doldrums can be a real thing. Darker, colder days can give us cues whether it’s nutritional, chemical, or psychological to combat the season’s climate. The brain and the stomach are a team. Under stress, there are certain things, like sugar or salt, that certainly provide an instant, Bio chemical rush. That being said, researchers are still studying whether certain foods actually provide emotional comfort or whether we just assume they do. Are there psychological mood-boosters that are more than a temporary food rush? A study published in the American Psychological Associations journal Health Psychology found that in “tests of two groups of people, comfort foods led to ‘significant’ mood improvement, but this improvement was not measurably different when compared with other foods or no food at all.It concluded that “Individuals may be giving comfort food ‘credit’ for mood effects that would have occurred even in the absence of the comfort food.