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Jul. 7th, 2004 09:59 amStressed Women Seek Fatty Food
Klein and her colleagues presented the participants with a variety of tasks over 25 minutes while randomly blasting them with office sounds — a phone ringing, a typewriter clacking — at 108 decibels, the same noise level you would get standing next to a jackhammer.
After that time was up, the participants were left alone for 12 minutes and offered a magazine, water and a tray of snacks — fatty cheese, potato chips and white chocolate, and lowfat popcorn, pretzels and jelly beans.
After they had snacked, they were asked to trace their way through an unsolvable maze.
Those women whose stress level was the highest during the maze exercise — their blood pressure and heart rate remained high, and they quickly showed frustration with the maze — tended to eschew the lowfat snacks in favor of fattier treats.
Women who were highly frustrated by the noise stress ate 65 to 70 grams of the fatty snacks during the break, twice as much as the women who were not as frustrated.
"What's interesting is that during the noise, during the work time, people rise to the occasion," Klein said. "They accomplish the job they have to get done, and they do quite well at it. They block all the other things that are going on in their environment.
"But there's a psychological and mental cost to that, and what that is is that after that's over, once the stressor is done, then we see this behavioral element."
Klein said a corollary can be seen most weekends, when people are most likely to binge drink or stray from their diets.
Klein and her colleagues presented the participants with a variety of tasks over 25 minutes while randomly blasting them with office sounds — a phone ringing, a typewriter clacking — at 108 decibels, the same noise level you would get standing next to a jackhammer.
After that time was up, the participants were left alone for 12 minutes and offered a magazine, water and a tray of snacks — fatty cheese, potato chips and white chocolate, and lowfat popcorn, pretzels and jelly beans.
After they had snacked, they were asked to trace their way through an unsolvable maze.
Those women whose stress level was the highest during the maze exercise — their blood pressure and heart rate remained high, and they quickly showed frustration with the maze — tended to eschew the lowfat snacks in favor of fattier treats.
Women who were highly frustrated by the noise stress ate 65 to 70 grams of the fatty snacks during the break, twice as much as the women who were not as frustrated.
"What's interesting is that during the noise, during the work time, people rise to the occasion," Klein said. "They accomplish the job they have to get done, and they do quite well at it. They block all the other things that are going on in their environment.
"But there's a psychological and mental cost to that, and what that is is that after that's over, once the stressor is done, then we see this behavioral element."
Klein said a corollary can be seen most weekends, when people are most likely to binge drink or stray from their diets.
