The humble Arctic Roll, a teatime staple not so long ago, is the latest in a growing shopping list of nostalgia foods ready for a comeback.

The food giant Mars, which over the summer tested a limited return for Opal Fruits, is considering returning the Snickers bar to its original brand name, Marathon. Orangina has brought back its iconic 1970s glass bottle and Cadbury has resurrected Wispa.

Walkers Snackfoods, meanwhile, relaunched Monster Munch this month, with new, old-style packaging featuring the goofy-eyed, slack-jawed, cartoon monsters made famous in the Seventies.

That nostalgia food is fast becoming a trend should come as no surprise. True, some indicators suggest that as the credit crunch deepens we're buying turnips and cheaper cuts of meat to cook more economically. Earlier this month the flour supplier Allinson's reported sales of bread-making flour up 50 per cent in just one month, while Asda confirmed a sharp increase in sales of home-baking products.

Yet there's strong evidence, too, to show that when times get tough many of us will turn to familiar food brands - not to save a few pennies, but to comfort eat.

Forty-three per cent of adults in the UK eat to stifle feelings of boredom, loneliness and stress, according to a recent survey conducted by the Priory Clinic. Experts call it “emotional eating”: the desire to eat particular foods to change your mood. Obvious examples include bread, biscuits and cake. And, of course, chocolate, as recession-proof a food as you're likely to find, and an obvious cheap source of solace when times get tough.

Is it any coincidence, then, that Thorntons, the chocolate maker, has just announced rising sales? “I suppose you could call it a win-win situation,” says Tony Bilsborough, a Cadbury spokesman. The company has just reintroduced its Wispa chocolate bar nationwide after a limited trial late last year. “People have such a strong emotional connection with confectionery, chocolate especially. When you are happy you tend to buy it to celebrate and when you're not, you buy it to cheer yourself up.”

Chocolate aside, comfort eating is usually caused by stress, according to Dr Daryl O'Connor, a health psychologist at Leeds University. He says: “Daily hassles posing a potential threat to self-esteem are a particularly potent trigger for comfort eating. Also ranking high as causes are relationship difficulties and work-related anxiety, although clearly problems in the wider world, such as the financial crisis, will also have a direct impact on our mood.”

Whatever the truth about the psychology behind comfort eating, there's little doubt that the emotional associations we have with certain types of food - and, more specifically, food brands - are an important consideration for food companies when it comes to marketing.

“Nostalgia for the past has always been heightened by economic shifts,” claims Robert Opie, an author, nostalgia expert and the curator of the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising. “In earlier periods of economic uncertainty - the 1930s, for example - people and brands responded as a number are today.”

The trend in the 1930s was towards Victorian-style imagery from the 1860s, an earlier, safer, simpler age. So when Quality Street launched in late 1936 the packaging featured an older woman reassuringly clad in crinoline beside a soldier friend rather than anything contemporary.

Seventy years on and the same thinking still holds true. “Tapping into a previous era can be highly effective, especially when times are tough,” says Dominic South, the senior brand manager at Walkers.

Its retro-redesigned Monster Munch crisps went on sale this month along with the reintroduction by popular demand of two flavours from the Seventies: pickled onion and roast beef.

“In changing times people fall back on the brands they consumed earlier in their lives, when times were less uncertain,” agrees Rune Gustafson, the chief executive of the branding consultancy Interbrand. “You could argue that the Seventies were hardly a golden age of security. But if you remember feeling secure and protected within the family from what was going on in the world, the past will certainly seem easier, more secure, safe. There's certainly an element of escapism in all of this.”

Other marketing experts endorse this view. “When no one knows what's round the corner, there's reassurance to be found in familiar brands that have stood the test of time,” says Andy Nairn, the planning director at Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, the London advertising agency behind the new Hovis commercial. It celebrates the brand's 122-year heritage with a nostalgia-laden skip through British history by a little a boy who picks up his first daily loaf of bread in 1886.

There's soul-searching and bewilderment in the world around us at the moment, says Nairn. Concerns about obesity, diet and healthy living.Conflicting messages about what to eat, and the health risks associated with getting it wrong. Global warming and the need eat more sustainably. All this and more have had a fundamental effect not just in recent weeks, but over the past couple of years.

“We have complex feelings about food, especially the food we grew up with,” Nairn says. “There is certainly a sense today that things are so complicated that there's reassurance to be found in the past, even a past viewed through rose-tinted spectacles.” Yet even consumers stressed by the credit crunch into comfort eating expect a degree of honesty and integrity in the nostalgia food brands they choose to buy. “Some of the more short-lived relaunches we've seen recently have been little more than PR stunts,” Robert Opie says.

Offering a short cut to the past alone isn't enough, it seems. Just as important as providing consumers with reassurance is clear proof that a brand is up to date with consumers' needs. “Sometime in the mid-Nineties Mars brought back Spangles, but they didn't really catch on,” he adds. “The reason? People's tastes had changed.”

Amanda Ursell on healthier comfort foods

It is hard to separate the effect a food is having on you emotionally from the physical effect of its taste, texture and its fat, sugar and protein content.

As Jeya Henry, Professor of Nutrition at Oxford Brookes University says: “You could say that nostalgia foods give you a feeling of warmth and security just because of the clever branding. However, they would not keep selling and having repeat customers if they were not fulfilling a pleasurable physical need as well.”

A packet of Opal Fruits, for instance, may make you feel cosy and heady because you ate them as a child, but they deliver an energy lift that gives a little instant high. Along with the bright, happy packaging, they may actually physically lighten your mood slightly on eating.

From a nutritional point of view some nostalgia foods make better choices than others. While chewy Opal Fruits coat your teeth in sugar and increase the risk of tooth decay, Arctic Roll has only 100 calories and 3g of fat per 50g average slice. As it is mostly ice-cream, it will not trigger a big sugar-high so you should feel quite satisfied after just one slice.

Oddly enough, a Snickers bar is also low GI, but a standard bar will give you 303 calories and 17g of fat, so it is wise to ration yourself if you do not want to pile on extra pounds.

In my view, when it comes to treats, you cannot go wrong with a little bit of ordinary chocolate and if it is a brand that you remember from childhood that makes you feel secure, so much the better. Also low GI, the heady, relaxing sensation you get from indulging comes partly from chocolate being the only food that melts at body temperature and, therefore, in your mouth. Have a small 35g bar and you get about 179 calories which is not much more than a 150g yoghurt but a whole lot more satisfying from an emotional front.

Love it or hate it, Angel Delight was on many a 1970s table and it, too, has had a nutritional makeover. Now claiming to be free from artificial colours, preservatives and flavours, a serving made with semi-skimmed milk has only 107 calories and 11.9g of fat. Have it with Del Monte canned peach slices and you will be transported to childhood days, safe in the knowledge that you have had a portion of your five fruit and veg a day and some vitamin C from the peaches, even though they are canned.

Personally, I have always felt a sense of comfort when I see a tin of Bird's Custard powder in my cupboard. My advice is to dust down such gems, forget instant packet versions that are packed with sugar, which have almost made this old-fashioned version redundant, and make your own with semi-skimmed milk and granulated fruit sugar for an excellent, heart-warming, calcium-rich snack or pudding.

Which foods would you like to see brought back? E-mail us at body&soul@thetimes.co.uk and let us know

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