Why an Old Snack Can Bring You Closer

Some foods are just food. Others seem to come with an entire place and time attached.

A cereal you have not eaten since elementary school. A candy your grandmother kept in her kitchen. The crackers you ate after school. A drink that only appeared on special occasions.

You taste it again years later and suddenly you remember things you were not trying to remember at all.

There is some interesting psychology behind that experience, and it may help explain why revisiting an old childhood snack can make for a surprisingly good conversation with your partner.

Food can be a shortcut to an old memory

Psychologists have long studied the unusual relationship between smell and autobiographical memory (our memories of events and experiences from our own lives).

Odors can act as powerful memory cues. Research on odor-evoked autobiographical memory suggests that these memories can reach unusually far back in time and can carry a vivid feeling of being mentally transported into an earlier experience.

That helps explain why an old snack may bring back much more than the memory of its flavor.

You might remember the kitchen where you ate it. The person who bought it. The friend you traded it with at lunch. The television show that was always playing. The strange little ritual that surrounded it.

Nostalgic food seems to be social

More recent research has looked specifically at food nostalgia.

In a series of studies published in Cognition and Emotion, researchers explored what happens when people think about or experience foods that feel personally nostalgic.

In two preregistered experiments, participants reflected on either a personally nostalgic food or a regularly consumed food. Nostalgic food experiences were linked with greater comfort through an increase in social connectedness.

That is an interesting detail because childhood foods rarely exist in our memories completely by themselves.

They are often attached to people: a parent, sibling, grandparent, friend, classmate or neighbor. Remembering the food can also mean remembering the social world around it.

Sometimes the snack is simply the door. The story behind it is where the interesting part begins.

And that is where it gets interesting for couples

Imagine your partner takes one bite and says:

“My grandfather always had these in his kitchen.”

You may have known this person for years and still never have heard that particular story.

Relationship research gives us another piece of the puzzle. Intimacy is not created only through dramatic conversations. Everyday self-disclosure (sharing experiences, memories and pieces of ourselves) can matter too.

In one daily-diary study, 96 married couples recorded their interactions for 42 days. Both self-disclosure and partner disclosure were associated with greater intimacy, and an important part of that process was perceived partner responsiveness: feeling that the other person understood, cared about and responded to what was shared.

Eating together gives the conversation a setting

There is another relevant piece of research here: social eating.

A large UK study examined the role of eating with other people and found associations between social eating and stronger feelings of social connection.

Particularly relevant to this little experiment, evening meals that left people feeling closer to the people they were eating with tended to involve more laughter and reminiscing.

The research was not specifically about romantic partners or childhood snacks, so it cannot tell us that sharing one old snack will improve a relationship.

But it points toward something useful: food and reminiscing already make natural companions.

Try it tonight

The old-snack experiment

Keep it easy. This is not meant to turn into a serious relationship exercise.

Pick one snack neither of you has eaten in years, ideally something connected to childhood or your teenage years.

Eat it together. Before trying to create a conversation, notice what each of you remembers first.

Follow the memory. Ask one question and see where the story goes instead of trying to get through a list.

A few questions to try:

• Where did you usually eat this?
• Who were you normally with?
• Was it an everyday food or a special treat?
• What does the taste or smell remind you of first?
• What is one detail from that time you have not thought about in years?

You do not have to answer every question, and the memories do not have to become profound.

Maybe you discover that your partner was fiercely protective of their lunchbox cookies. Maybe the snack tastes nothing like either of you remembers. Maybe one ridiculous childhood story turns into five.

That is enough.

A small idea, with an interesting reason behind it

There is no research showing that eating one childhood snack will make a couple closer.

What research does give us are several interesting pieces: nostalgic foods can evoke social connectedness; sensory cues can bring autobiographical memories to the surface; reminiscing often appears naturally around shared food; and sharing personal experiences with a responsive partner is part of the process associated with intimacy.

Put those pieces together and an ordinary snack becomes something a little more useful:

A simple reason to tell each other a story you may not have heard before.

Research behind this guide

Want to read more?

These are some of the studies and reviews that informed this MiniMo Guide.

Food nostalgia Food nostalgia and food comfort: the role of social connectedness View the study → Memory & smell The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health View the review → Intimacy & disclosure The interpersonal process model of intimacy in marriage: a daily-diary and multilevel modeling approach View the study → Social eating Breaking Bread: The Functions of Social Eating Read the open-access article →

These studies examine related processes: food nostalgia, autobiographical memory, social eating, self-disclosure and intimacy. They did not test this exact MiniMo activity, so this guide intentionally avoids claiming that sharing a nostalgic snack has a proven effect on romantic relationships.