The effect of unhealthy food and liking on stress reactivity

In many individuals, stress appears to stimulate an increase in energy intake as well as a shift in food choice toward unhealthy food items or comfort foods. Eating during stress is widely assumed to have anxiolytic properties, but there is little empirical support for this. The current two studies examined if either an unhealthy food item or a healthy food item could reduce stress reactivity and extended previous findings by examining whether participant liking contributes to any potential stress reduction. In the first experiment, participants rated baseline anxiety, were assigned to eat no food, carrots, or a candy bar, rated their anxiety a second time, and reported their liking of the assigned condition. The second experiment followed a similar procedure, except participants underwent a stressor before being asked to eat a food item. In addition, physiological measures of stress (salivary cortisol and a-amylase, and cardiovascular measures) were recorded. In both experiments, there was no effect of food on any measure of emotional or physiological stress. In contrast, participants who highly liked their condition exhibited a suppression of anxiety in both experiments and showed enhanced post-stress recovery of a-amylase. The anxiolytic effects of liking were not dependent on whether participants engaged in the healthy, unhealthy, or no food condition, which indicates that the self-perceived liking of a post-stress activity affects stress recovery more than the nutritional value. This has potential implications in how the population thinks about which activities to engage in to stimulate stress recovery.

Automated summary

In two experiments, it was found that unhealthy or healthy food did not affect emotional or physiological stress, but liking of the food item could suppress anxiety and enhance post-stress recovery of α-amylase. This suggests that the self-perceived liking of post-stress activities has a greater impact on stress recovery than the nutritional value of the food consumed.