A new Swiss study suggests that stress can weaken a person's will power to choose healthier food options when making food decisions.
According to Live Science, researchers in Switzerland conducted a small study involving 51 male participants who were making an effort to eat healthy food and exercise regularly. (No women were involved in the study, because the stress hormone cortisol interacts with estrogen, making it harder for researchers to control cortisol levels as a variable, Maier said.) Of the 51, 29 male participants went through a treatment designed to induce moderate stress levels inside the laboratory before they were asked to choose between two food options. The other 22 male participants were asked about their food choices, without undergoing the said in lab treatment which involved being observed and evaluated by the experimenter while immersing a hand in an ice water bath for 3 minutes.
Results showed that the participants who were subjected to the stress treatment were more likely to pick an unhealthy food, than those who were not stressed.
"The findings show that self-control is mediated by a complex and distributed network in the brain," said Silvia Maier, the lead researcher of the study from the University of Zurich. As Maier explained that even moderately stressful events, which occur more often than repeated stress, may stimulate lapses of self-control resulting to compromise in choices of eating healthy, as it will be hard for the person's will power and to exert self-control.
"This is important because moderate stressors are more common than extreme events and will thus influence self-control choices more frequently and for a larger portion of the population," says senior author Todd Hare.
Maier also recommended that people who are on a diet should recognize that stress increases their vulnerability to surrender to unhealthy food cravings. She also suggested practical alternatives such as not stocking up junk foods in the pantry so that if a craving for that unhealthy food arises, it won't be readily available to eat.
