Why do we eat unhealthy food when we're stressed?

After a tiring emotion, frustration is an amazingly powerful consequence. It has often been mentioned as a motive for crime and violence, especially among teenagers.

Another unfortunate effects are that it seems that it causes people to consume ready and unhealthful food.

Scientists who have conducted a recent study of this phenomenon say that frustration moves us to seek sweet or fatty foods that simulate dopamine. They presented the results of the research at last week's Annual Conference of the British Psychological Association. Researchers from the University of Central Lancaster in the United Kingdom designed two experiments to find out how they react to our outdated reward systems.

In the first experiment, 52 participants were instructed to constantly copy the same set of letters. After the participants became bored, researchers provided a questionnaire on their favorite foods. Participants in the second experiment saw one of two videos in a room equipped with healthful and unhealthy foods. One of the videos was funny, the other boring.

Of course, participants in the first task expressed more interest in unhealthy food than in their questionnaires after completing the boring task of copying letters. Patatins, cookies, and fast foods top the preferences list. (It also means that there are some of the most problematic foods in the interdependence. And where is this? Center of the brain's ransom system.

Similarly, people in the group who watched the boring video consumed relatively unhealthy food rather than those who saw something interesting. Researcher Sandy Man was not surprised at the results of the experiment, which “is in line with previous research, suggesting that we die eating fatty and sugar foods, when we are upset”- she said in a press release.

This strengthens the theory that boredom is linked to low levels of dopamine, chemical brain stimulants, and that people who try to increase it by consuming fat and sugar, if they cannot remove their frustration by some other way”. Our bodies, including our brain, evolve to ensure that we are fed, sheltered, and mate.

To ensure that we have these activities a priority, our bodies produce chemicals that create the feeling of being good like dopamine and serotonin when we do something “right”. Sadly, what was necessary and right for our prehistoric ancestors can also be magnificent for us. Fats and sugars, which were so valuable and rare for cave dwellers, are now available in larger quantities, found in any processed food imaginable.

And when we eat these foods, as we do so often, our brain rewards us. <x0) Bored people don't consume nuts”.