We know that eating well is good for our health. However, new research shows that stress can override the benefits of making better food choices. To evaluate the interactions between diet and stress, researchers recruited 58 women who completed surveys to assess the kinds of stress they were experiencing. The women were given two different types of meals to eat. One meal was high in saturated fat, the type of fat linked to cardiovascular disease. The other meal was high in a plant-based oil, which is considered more healthful. When women were not stressed, and they got the healthier meal, their inflammatory responses were lower than when they had the high saturated fat meal. That was expected. But here’s the remarkable part: If a woman was stressed on a day when she got the healthy meal, she looked like she was eating the saturated fat meal in terms of her inflammation responses.
This article was originally published on September 28, 2016
