Why is it called comfort food?

Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford, states that comfort foods are unconsciously and consciously associated with joyful and pleasant experiences. It is a food that someone was given when they were looked after as a child, for example, and is something that, as adults, people reach for when they feel emotionally threatened. Comfort meals are typically easy to prepare, frequently connected to a previous celebration, and often heavy in sugars or carbs. According to Charles Spence, comfort foods are called as such because they are linked to carefree memories and evoke coziness.