How profoundly does stress affect the health? You'd be surprised at how closely stress and overeating are tied together. A new study found that negativity brought on by work-related stress affects a person's eating habits.
According to Yihao Liu, an assistant professor at University of Illinois and co-author of the study, eating is sometimes used as a way to make a person feel better amidst a stressful day at work. And because it's used as an emotional crutch, the lack of self-control leads to poor food choices. This causes steady weight gain and other health problems.
A new study revealed that stress during work could negatively influence eating behaviors of employees, making them overeat or consume large amount of unhealthy foods at dinnertime.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, showed that the negative mood of employees from a stressful workday could carry on to the dinner table. This can be apparent in the food choices of the employees, in which they then to eat more than usual and opt for more junk foods instead of healthy foods.
For the paper, the researchers conducted two studies involving 235 total workers in China. In the first study, the researchers sampled 125 participants from five Chinese information technology companies. These employees experienced high workload in the morning. On the other hand, the second study involved 110 customer service employees that often get stressed having to deal with rude and demanding customers.
The researchers found that employees in both studies tend to overeat or prefer junk foods at night after developing a negative mood brought about by their stressful workday.
Image courtesy of: Viaggio Gratis2009
