Hungry? How to avoid the Snickers…

This post is from DiSH Lab intern Rachel:

Your finals week Snickers bar craving may not be purely from stress. While typical comfort foods are characterized as high in fat and calories and low in nutrition, a recent study from right here at UCLA shines a new light on “stress eating.” The study recruited 59 UCLA students, presenting them with an array of both healthy and unhealthy snacks. They were asked  how frequently they typically ate each of these foods, and which of the foods they would want to eat during finals. Results showed that participants were more likely to choose the foods they eat out of habit rather than the junk foods. This suggests that when we are stressed, we don’t necessarily tend to eat more junk food; rather, we fall back on our habits. This finding is very reminiscent of Allison’s post “Stress and poor health behaviors don’t always go hand in hand…” So the key to eating healthy while stressed is eating healthy habitually.