It’s cold comfort but stress DOES make us crave junk food
THOSE who say ‘comfort eating’ is just a term used to justify an unhealthy diet could now be left eating their words.
A new study has found that we do in fact crave more junk food and consume more carbs on days when we are stressed.
Volunteers were given daily questionnaires on their tension levels and asked to rate their cravings for a list of fast foods, fatty foods, sweet items and carbohydrates or starches, and then asked if they had consumed any of them that day.
On days when they felt more tense than usual, they were more likely to want sweet treats such as cake and chocolate, along with carbs and fast food such as pizza and burgers. They also reported eating more carbohydrate-laden and starchy foods on these days in the questionnaire, such as pasta, bread and baked potatoes.
This trend is often described as comfort eating, or ‘emotioninduced eating’ – and is well understood by burnt-out office workers who find themselves bingeing unhealthily in the evenings.
Some experts believe people have limited self-control, so when stress and anxiety have used a lot of it up, they have less left to resist unhealthy foods, and this study – published in the journal Eating Behaviors – is evidence for this. Self-control was not measured in the study, which also found women tended to crave fast food most, but men ate more.
Natalya Beer, a co-author of the new research from the University of Western Australia, said: ‘Our study shows that individuals who experience more tension or anxiety may experience greater cravings for sweet and fast foods and in turn be more likely to give in to these cravings. We’ve also shown that dayto-day tension or anxiety may lead to greater cravings and greater consumption of carbohydrates.
‘This is interesting because it shows that individuals’ psychological experiences may have a strong influence on the types and amount of foods they consume.’
The study’s 137 participants were asked to provide information on feelings of anxiety, nervousness, panic and worry after thinking about their day, which were then combined into a score to indicate their tension levels.
The daily questionnaire also asked people to rate their cravings for certain foods. It was found that people who were generally more tense had more cravings for sweet and fast food than those with lower tension levels. They ate more sweets and fast food in the week of the study, and consumed more food in general than less tense people.
Women had more fast-food cravings