When stressed, many people turn to chocolate or other high-calorie foods. Why actually?
Time is running, the boss is putting pressure on you. The household calls and the children fight. In stressful situations, many people like to eat chocolate, nuts, crisps and other high-calorie foods. This can become a problem, especially if the load is sustained.
“Stress turns off the part of the brain that tells us we’ve eaten enough,” explains neurobiologist Herbert Herzog of the Garvan Institute for Medical Research in Sydney. Herzog and colleagues used mice to study how chronic stress affects eating behavior and weight.
What does stress do to people?
“We have shown that chronic stress combined with a high-calorie diet can lead to increased food intake and a preference for sweet, savory foods, which in turn promotes weight gain and obesity,” Herzog said. “Stressed mice on a high-fat diet gained twice as much weight as mice on the same diet that were not stressed,” explains fellow researcher Kenny Chi Kin Ip.
Other scientific data also show that stress can lead to people eating more high-calorie, unhealthy food, says André Kleinridders from the University of Potsdam. However, it is still not sufficiently understood why some people are sensitive to stress and others are not. It has also not been sufficiently researched why some people eat more when they are stressed – and others less.
The happiness hormone dopamine does not exist in broccoli
Psychologically speaking, the soothing effect of eating can be explained, says psychological psychotherapist and author Michael Macht (“Hunger, Frustration and Chocolate”). The soothing effect ensures that people eat at all. In the case of emotional stress, this effect is misused, namely to cope better with the stress. “It’s a pattern based on learning processes,” says Macht.
Many people are aware that going to the fridge or reaching into the candy drawer is unhealthy. And yet they do it again and again. Kleinridders explains it like this: “We know that our mental abilities are impaired in stressful situations and that wrong decisions are more likely to be made. The impulsiveness increases,” says the professor for molecular and experimental nutritional medicine.
“Tasty, high-energy food is in itself a great incentive and has a strong emotional effect. In addition, the availability is very high,” adds Michael Macht. For many people, eating is therefore a particularly easy way to cope with stress.
According to Kleinridders, sugar and other high-calorie foods cause dopamine, the happiness hormone, to be released even when you are full. “That doesn’t work with broccoli.” The happiness hormones provided a short-term improvement. “But if you have negative stress over and over again and you reach for sweets and fatty foods, you get into a vicious circle that leads to obesity and insulin resistance,” says Kleinridders.
In order to avoid high-calorie missteps, it makes sense to reduce and eliminate stress in the long term. Sport helps one, meditation helps the other. “It’s very individual,” says Kleinridders.
“There is no miracle cure. It’s important to eat carefully. In stressful situations, you might prefer fruit and vegetables to biscuits and chocolate, or to emptying the fridge,” adds Herzog.
You have to endure negative feelings
However, in Kleinridder’s experience, theoretical knowledge is not enough. People need specific help. “We need interdisciplinary research, also with psychologists and social researchers. You have to give people something to help them,” he demands.
Such an aid – a mindfulness-based training program – was developed at the University of Würzburg. In the program, participants learn to recognize their behavioral patterns in stressful situations. In addition, individual possibilities are developed to cope with negative feelings differently than with food. “And it’s about impulse control, like how I deal with cravings for food,” explains Macht, who was involved in the development. It’s also about learning to deal with negative feelings.