Emotional Eating

There is a great article regarding eating and our emotions over on The Atlantic. Written by Julie Beck it is called Our Moods, Our Foods.

This topic is very interesting to me due to how often I see people using food to help control their moods – myself included. There is a good reason we call them comfort foods because that is what they provide us. Unfortunately these types of foods often provide us a lot of the wrong types of calories – typically sugar and fat. Yet there was also proof that healthy eating could also induce a better mood.

I enjoyed the article, especially since it was linked to many studies involving mood and food, such as ‘Emotional arousal and overeating in restrained eaters’, ‘Happy eating. The underestimated role of overeating in a positive mood’, and my favorite, ‘Chocolate eating in healthy men during experimentally induced sadness and joy’… mmmm, chocolate.

I found the article interesting, thought provoking and it sort of dove tailed with another article I read today regarding our sense of taste and longevity. Taste test: Could sense of taste affect length of life? is an article about a study done on fruit flies. The studies found that the sense of taste has a powerful role in a long and healthy life – if that is, you are a fruit fly. They found a negative effect on lifespan connected to bitter tastes, positive effects with sweet tastes. Not so different from how I feel about those two tastes. The most interesting thing about the study was regarding the ability of the flies to taste water. My mind boggles at how they would know these flies were tasting water, but I guess that is why I am not a scientist. Anyway, they found that flies that could not taste water lived up to 43% longer than other flies.

I think what we can take away from these articles is that food can effect our moods and our moods will make us choose certain foods and if we are a fruit fly, being unable to taste water is best of all.