Eat Fat and Stress Out

A new report in the Journal of Nutrition finds that a single high fat meal can increase your response to psychological stress. Meaning, stressing out a couple hours after you eat is worse if you just ate a high fat meal.

Researchers fed people either a high fat or a low fat meal with equal calories. Then they subjected them to a stressor a couple of hours later – like math problems, public speaking or sticking their hand in ice water. People that ate the high fat meal had higher blood pressure after the stress than those that at the low-fat meal.

Over-reacting to stress predicts future diseaseResearchers call this increased ‘cardiovascular reactivity'. We have thought for some time that increased cardiovascular reactivity predicts later development of hypertension (chronic high blood pressure) and heart disease. This means that people who show increased blood pressure after stress are more likely to develop chronic problems later.

We have also known for some time that a high fat diet increases your odds of developing hypertension and heart disease.

What this new report shows is that even a single high fat meal might boost your odds against developing later disease. It also shows how can stress affect a person that is not eating well. This makes an important point about the interaction between nutrition and mental health. The better you eat, the less likely stress will do permanent damage.

Try a new salad and chill outThis doesn't mean that you are doomed because of that time you went through drive through and then got stuck in traffic – and went into a cheeseburger induced road rage. But it does place more immediate pressure on being careful about what you eat on a regular basis – especially if you know you may be facing a stressful meeting after lunch.

Every time we eat poorly, we are doing a little damage. Most of that damage is reversed by our ‘repair systems' – but a small amount of it is not reversed. Eventually, if we do enough damage it will turn into a measurable disease. This is why it is so important to get your kids off to a good start with their eating habits.

Continue to expose yourself and your kids to new, healthier foods until you find some that you really like. Developing a taste for variety is one of the best things you can do. It increase your odds of getting balanced nutrition and increases your new experiences, which in turn help build brain circuits that buffer you against stress. Variety, as the old adage says, is the spice of life.