Giving these sometimes-unusual dishes the label comfort food was a bit of permission to admit to one’s indulgences—at least until the diet industry tried to claim the term. Their idea of comfort had always been a little bit different.In a 1966 book titled “The Thin Book by a Formerly Fat Psychiatrist,” Theodore Rubin listed tea as his top comforting food. Now the diet-conscious warned of the dangers of eating for emotional gratification, ensuring that our favourite dishes would henceforth be served with a side of guilt.

Whatever We Want To Indulge In

The dueling diet trends of the 1990s should have spelled the end for comfort food. The decade began with low-fat and then no-fat products crowding the supermarket shelves and ended with its mirror image: the low-carb dictates of Atkins. The 1993 debut of the Food Network, too, should have doomed the trend. Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse turned every home cook into a professional chef, experimenting with new ingredients and creating picture-perfect plates.

The New Diet Trends

Science has tried to explain this persistent draw. One <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25756731?mag=a-brief-history-of-comfort-food">straightforward answer</a> offered by a team of food scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences credits comfort food’s appeal to its nutritional make up. Many dishes are high in fat or sugar, substances that the body can process into temporary stress relief. Psychologists have explored a more complicated connection between food and individual memory, theorizing that well-loved dishes can evoke the same feelings of security or contentment they did when the diner was younger.

The Food We Loved When We Were Young

As we quarantine with macaroni and cheese, meat and potatoes, and other high-calorie comfort foods to ride out the pandemic, let’s pause to give a moment’s thanks to Liza Minnelli.In 1970, the young actress was perhaps the first—and certainly the most glamorous—to coin the modern usage of the now-well-worn phrase, comfort food. “Comfort food is anything you just yum, yum, yum,” she told syndicated newspaper food columnist Johna Blinn, smacking her lips together. She was daydreaming of a hamburger with all the fixins.

Comfort Food

Before Minnelli, comfort food had been the bland fare of the young, the elderly, and the ill. In the decade after, the two words grew slowly into an inescapable food fad, and now, a half-century later, comfort food has become a trend that will never end.Potatoes were the 1970s original “comfort food,” when the phrase still appeared in quotation marks in newspaper lifestyles sections. Minnelli preferred hers baked with sour cream, pepper, and butter. Philadelphia Inquirer food writer Elaine Tait opted for boiled with bacon, slices of hard-boiled egg, and ripe tomato

Early Comfort Food Was Bland

Chicken soup also quickly earned the title, a soothing meal with an appeal that cut across demographic divides. But from there, tastes diverged.The key word in Minnelli’s definition, it turned out, hadn’t been “yum” but “you.” The comfort foods of the 1970s were intensely personal, something enjoyed at home and alone. People confessed to craving butter and sweet onions on rye, sardines straight from the can, brown sugar sandwiches, salted peanuts and milk, and soggy cornflakes.

What Your Like

In the pages of Bon Appétit, M.F.K Fisher rhapsodized about milk toast, a dish that “seems to soothe nerves and muscles and mind altogether.” She published the only recipe for comfort food anyone will ever need. You can debate the merits of buttered toast drowned in warm milk seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika, but not the final step in its preparation.Before eating, she writes, “walk gently to wherever you have decided to feel right in your skin.”

Preparing Your Own Comfort Food

By the turn of the decade, “mood food” swung from savoury to sweet. The country sought sinful solace in ice cream, pudding, pie, and, of course, chocolate.The 1970s and early 1980s gave us plenty of foods we’ve all but forgotten—fondue, bread bowls, raspberry vinaigrette—and at first, comfort food followed the same trajectory: from popularity to commodification to backlash.

The Forgotten Comfort Food

Among the earliest cookbooks to spot the public’s yearning was The Best of Electric Crockery Cooking. When it was published in 1976, the book sold itself as a gourmet’s guide to the new-fangled Crock Pot. But, by 1978, it was advertising its step-by-step instructions for meatloaf and minestrone. Thousands of similar titles have been published in the decades since, offering “quick,” “modern,” “familiar,” “shareable,” “gluten-free,” “keto” and “vegan” comfort food recipes.

The Cookbooks

For years, countless diners and cafeterias had been serving the type of 1950s middle-class, Midwestern cuisine that was, by the mid-1980s, what people meant when they said “comfort food.” By the early 1980s, the country’s top chefs wanted a taste. The Los Angeles Times marvelled at the attention lavished on rice pudding by kitchens better known for their caviar.

The Diners

Meanwhile, the food writer Jane Stern despaired at the phone calls from high-end restaurants she and her husband, Michael, fielded after publishing their cookbook on the topic. These dishes didn’t belong in fancy dining rooms, especially not at twice the price. “The point is that food is more than food—it’s heart strings—it’s memory,” she said. In 1988, the decidedly upscale Food & Wine magazine declared comfort food to be “hot.”

The Mags

The behavioural economist Stacy Wood, however, posited that we’ve all fallen victim to the “comfort food fallacy” in a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/644749?mag=a-brief-history-of-comfort-food">2010 article for the Journal of Consumer Research</a>. Her study found that, although consumers predict that they will reach for familiar flavours in times of transition, the opposite is actually true. Change begets change, the study concluded, and consumers tend to choose more novel options in moments of personal upheaval.

Comfort Food Fallacy

In the midst of the upheaval of 2020 that we are, collectively, craving comfort food—the term now so ingrained in our vocabulary that we apply it not just to soothing sustenance, but also to the unchallenging and often nostalgic music, movies, and other entertainments we’ve embraced during the quarantine.In the 1970s, comfort foods were idiosyncratic and solitary appetites, but over the years, as cookbooks and restaurants codified the menu, they became a communal experience.

The Food Of The Heart

Our newest culinary trend is also our oldest.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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<ul><li>In our often hurried lives, it's easy to pass right by objects and experiences of beauty. Taking the time to appreciate and find beauty can actually promote our health, relationships, and well-being in several ways.</li><li>Research shows that when we engage in expressive outlets such as music, dance, poetry, and art, we can experience improved physical and mental wellbeing.</li></ul>

Beauty’s Benefits

Our culture has many different perspectives about what “beauty” entails. Beauty isn’t all about just nice, lovely-looking things or people. It is more about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.This could include anything from the sunset on your way home to the budding magnolia in your driveway. It may also show up in the piano piece your child is learning for the first time or in your newborn’s smile.

What Is "Beauty?"

<ul><li>From the perspective of interpersonal neurobiology, the mind is able to flourish when its' domains are differentiated and linked, a process described as integration</li><li>Beauty encourages this integration process, encouraging present moment awareness, attunement, and emotional sensing between other people and objects</li><li>Engaging in expressive, artistic, aesthetic experiences supports our mind's ability to flourish</li><li>This is amplified when we can engage in such acts in the presence of a larger community and relationships with others.</li></ul>

Beauty and Interpersonal Neurobiology

Our culture has many different perspectives about what “beauty” entails.

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How Beauty Can Support a More Wholesome, Meaningful, and Integrated Life

Although talent feels and looks predestined, in fact we have a good deal of control over what skills we develop, and we have more potential than we might ever presume to guess.

Choose one goal beyond your present abilities.<ol><li>Chunk it up: Break the thing you're trying to master down into chunks and master them one by one, then put them back together.</li><li>Repetition: Repeat skills slowly and ensure to do them properly. Mistakes show a lack of competence in that area and should be viewed as an opportunity to improve. Repetition of mistakes will train the mistakes.</li><li>Feel the struggle: Pick a target, reach for it, and adjust as you go. </li></ol>

The rules of deep practice

Where you end up in your field, whether it's sports, arts, or business, is not a result of your genes and your environment.  Although talent feels and looks predestined, we have more control over what skills we develop and more potential than we might ever imagine.

Your talent is yours to code

The tactical approach towards skill-building is only one part. The other is the student's attitude towards their first lesson or experience. Three key factors fuel motivation and the love for the craft:<ul><li>Psychological identity: If one already possess the identity "I am a musician" from the start, they are more likely to take the actions needed to make that happen.</li><li>Long-term focus: A study of musicians showed that students who came to their first lesson with a long-term commitment outperformed those with a short-term commitment by 400%.</li><li>Emotional attachment.</li></ul>

Ignition - sparking your initial motivation

When we hear of 'muscle memory,' it really describes our brain's neurological circuitry. The brain circuits are connected and insulated by a substance called myelin. When we practice or engage in any skill, we stimulate myelin growth. Talent is the result of deep practice. The best way to learn is with deliberate practice where you push yourself to the edge constantly. The more you practice deliberately, the faster and better you learn

Mastery is about deep practice

Very few people can develop their talents by themselves. Everyone has teachers or coaches who train, motivate, teach and inspire.<ul><li>The best teachers are able to understand each student as an individual and customise their training to fit each student's requirements.</li><li>The teacher must be an example of what they're teaching, not saying one thing and demonstrating another.</li><li>The mentor-student relationship is a complex feedback loop. Top coaches continually observe what is working and readjust their own approach.</li><li>Trust: The student must be able to trust their teachers both for competence and integrity.</li></ul>

Coaching

Talent is the result of deep practice. In his book, Daniel Coyle looks at extraordinary performers, shows what made them great and give insights into true mastery.

This book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism. Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world's talent hotbeds, author Coyle identifies the three key elementsthat will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything.--From publisher description.

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What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This groundbreaking work provides readers with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others. Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism.Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything.• Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice.• Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development.• Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students.These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo’s to Michael Jordan’s. The good news about myelin is that it isn’t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished.Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.

Daniel Coyle is the author of the upcoming book The Culture Code (January 2018). He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent, The Secret Race (with Tyler Hamilton), and other books. Winner (with Hamilton) of the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Prize, he is a contributing editor for Outside magazine, and also works a special advisor to the Cleveland Indians. Coyle lives in Cleveland, Ohio during the school year and in Homer, Alaska, during the summer with his wife Jen, and their four children.

Daniel Coyle

The Talent Code

One of my favorite persuasion tactics is reciprocity. When we receive something from someone, whether it’s a gift or something as small as a compliment, we feel grateful. Our gratefulness makes us want to reciprocate and give them something in return. This is the power of reciprocity in action.&nbsp;We see this implemented in marketing. A brand may offer a special discount on first purchases, which may compel many first-time visitors to make a purchase. Some may offer a discount to people who sign up, compelling many shoppers to register on the site instead of checking out as guests.

1. Offer something to induce reciprocity.

If someone like Neil Patel were to provide you with marketing advice, you would listen and follow that advice. Similarly, SEO tips from Rand Fishkin could make you want to change your entire SEO strategy. We trust advice coming from people we see as authority figures in their line of expertise. This is because we believe the decision based on advice from an authority figure is less likely to go wrong.&nbsp; So you can start working with industry experts and influencers who can vouch for your products. This will bring an increased level of trust, which increases the likelihood of driving sales.&nbsp;

3. Get authority figures to vouch for you.  

When shoppers see that a certain item they like is running low in stock, they feel compelled to make the purchase right away instead of saving it for later. In a way, it goes hand in hand with the urgency principle.&nbsp;When a certain item is rare, we tend to have this perception that it is more valuable. On the other hand, we tend to lose interest in something that everyone else can have access to. In other words, exclusivity is what we crave as humans. This is what the scarcity principle is all about.&nbsp;

2. Let scarcity do the talking for you.  

“Persuasion” is a term often used in marketing, and we’re all probably aware of it. What many businesses fail to realize is that persuasion isn’t just about getting people to buy your product. You…

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Three Ways To Use The Power Of Persuasion In Marketing

Employee recognition is so Impactful to a positive culture, but so often overlooked. 58% of employees say employee recognition is how leaders could do more to improve employee engagement. Employee recognition has a considerable influence on the company culture and behaviours of staff. For long term success, align your employee recognition schemes with your company values. This approach will connect the attitude and performances of staff to the integral belief system of the organization.

#5 Performance

Employee Lifecycle Management or ELM is the different stages an employee goes through during their time at an organization. In HR, there are six stages in ELM: outreach, recruitment, Onboarding, development and training, performance, and Offboarding. A business can explore all the ways they can positively impact their employees’time at the organization.

Employee Lifecycle Management

45% of employers are concerned about finding employees with the necessary talents. Up-to-date job Adverts will capture the right level of skill and competency. Ensure that the roles and responsibilities that you’ve given to each position are regularly checked and up to date. If you’re looking for the right person in the role, you need to ensure you have the correct job descriptions. If you’re looking for the right person in the role, update your roles and responsibilities.

#2 Recruitment

Most employees will have decided within the first 90 days whether they want to remain at the company. Onboarding should include training, establishing new relationships, and developing a niche and, above all, focus on making the individual feel supported. The most successful onboarding processes extend beyond the first few weeks and go on throughout the year. This ensures all new hires are fully supported as they get to grips with their roles.

#3 Onboarding

The Digital workplace is the perfect hosting platform to hold a wide array of educational tools. Training is an essential component of the Employee Lifecycle. Investing in effective training can increase morale and job satisfaction as well as improve employee performance. The total loss to a business from ineffective training is $13.5M per year per 1,000 employees. Gamification and E-Learning is a popular method that has proven to be successful for both starters and long-term employees.

#4 Development and Training

A departure can be an incredibly revealing time that management should make as positive as their Onboarding process. Happy ex-employees act like brand ambassadors, provide job referrals, and can even return to the fold in the future. Keeping good relationships with individuals who have left also carries none of the risks that disgruntled ex-employees have. To create the best employee experience for your people,

#6 Offboarding

There is now a wide range of outreach channels, including social media and online job sites. A full description of the role, details on the workplace, and the perks available can be done to influence the job seeker. The first port-of-call for people answering your job ad is your website. First impressions count, which is why it’s so important to make sure your company’s message and image are on point.

#1 Outreach

Employee lifecycle management (ELM) is something that every HR department should prioritize. This is the process that focuses on the nurturing and developing of a company’s most critical asset: its…

A Brief History of Comfort Food

How Beauty Can Support a More Wholesome, Meaningful, and Integrated Life

The Talent Code

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Read like a Pro.

Three Ways To Use The Power Of Persuasion In Marketing

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A Brief History of Comfort Food

How Beauty Can Support a More Wholesome, Meaningful, and Integrated Life

The Talent Code

It's time to Read like a Pro.

Three Ways To Use The Power Of Persuasion In Marketing

CURATED BY

It's time to
Read like a Pro.