when many babies grow up, their brains still associate milk-related signals with healing and comfort. Eating fat-dense and/or high-carb foods, especially if they taste sweet—the sort that many humans tend to seek when feeling stressed or lonely—produces an analgesic effect in a number of different mammals. For rat and human alike, “comfort food” can dampen the body’s pain response, a kind of grown-up breast substitute.[*13]
