Tag: junk food

Categories : Diet and Nutrition General InterestTags :

Slow Traffic Pushes Commuters to Choose Fast Food

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Why Kei on Unsplash

Ever notice how much more tempting it is to pick up fast food for dinner after being stuck in traffic? It’s not just you. New research shows that traffic delays significantly increase visits to fast food restaurants, leading to unhealthier eating.

“In our analysis focusing on Los Angeles County, unexpected traffic delays beyond the usual congestion led to a 1% increase in fast food visits. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s equivalent to 1.2 million more fast food visits per year in LA County alone. We describe our results as being modest but meaningful in terms of potential for changing unhealthy food choices,” said study author Becca Taylor, assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Taylor and her co-authors had access to more than two years’ of daily highway traffic patterns in Los Angeles, along with data showing how many cell phone users entered fast-food restaurants in the same time period.

With these data, the team created a computational model showing a causal link between unexpected traffic slow-downs and fast food visits. This pattern held at various time scales, including 24-hour cycles and by the hour throughout a given day. When analysed by the day, traffic delays of just 30 seconds per mile were enough to spike fast-food visits by 1%.

“It might not be intuitive to imagine what a 30-second delay per mile feels like,” Taylor said. “I think of it as the difference between 10a.m. traffic and 5p.m. traffic.”

When the researchers broke the day into hour-long segments, they found a significantly greater number of fast food visits when traffic delays hit during the evening rush hour. At the same time, grocery store visits declined slightly.

“If there’s traffic between 5 and 7p.m., which happens to be right around the evening meal time, we see an increase in fast food visits,” Taylor said.

“Drivers have to make a decision about whether to go home and cook something, stop at the grocery store first, or just get fast food.”

Considering every major city has both traffic and fast food restaurants lining highway feeder roads, it’s not a stretch to extrapolate the pattern beyond Los Angeles.

Taylor and her co-authors say the link between traffic and unhealthy food choices is just one more reason policymakers around the country and the globe should prioritize infrastructure reforms to ease congestion.

“Our results contribute to the literature suggesting time constraints are really important to the food choices people make. Any policies aimed at loosening time constraints – and traffic is essentially lost time – could help battle unhealthy eating,” Taylor said. “That could mean improvements in infrastructure to mitigate traffic congestion, expanding public transport availability, and potentially increasing work from home opportunities.”

Source: University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

Categories : Diet and Nutrition Mental HealthTags :

How Chronic Stress Drives Cravings for ‘Comfort Foods’

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Reaching for a high-calorie snack is a common reaction when stressed – but this could be driving a vicious circle. Australian scientists report that stress combined with calorie-dense ‘comfort’ food creates brain changes that drive more eating, boost cravings for sweet, highly palatable food and lead to excess weight gain.

A team from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research reported in the journal Neuron that stress overrode the brain’s natural response to satiety, leading to non-stop reward signals that promote eating more highly palatable food. This occurred in a part of the brain called the lateral habenula, which when activated usually dampens these reward signals.

“Our findings reveal stress can override a natural brain response that diminishes the pleasure gained from eating — meaning the brain is continuously rewarded to eat,” says Professor Herzog, senior author of the study and Visiting Scientist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

“We showed that chronic stress, combined with a high-calorie diet, can drive more and more food intake as well as a preference for sweet, highly palatable food, thereby promoting weight gain and obesity. This research highlights how crucial a healthy diet is during times of stress.”

From stressed brain to weight gain

Most people will eat more than usual during times of stress and choose calorie-rich options high in sugar and fat. To understand what drives these eating habits, the team investigated in mouse models how different areas in the brain responded to chronic stress under various diets.

“We discovered that an area known as the lateral habenula, which is normally involved in switching off the brain’s reward response, was active in mice on a short-term, high-fat diet to protect the animal from overeating. However, when mice were chronically stressed, this part of the brain remained silent – allowing the reward signals to stay active and encourage feeding for pleasure, no longer responding to satiety regulatory signals,” explains first author Dr Kenny Chi Kin Ip.

“We found that stressed mice on a high-fat diet gained twice as much weight as mice on the same diet that were not stressed.”

The researchers discovered that at the centre of the weight gain was the molecule NPY, which the brain produces naturally in response to stress. When the researchers blocked NPY from activating brain cells in the lateral habenula in stressed mice on a high-fat diet, the mice consumed less comfort food, resulting in less weight gain.

Driving comfort eating

The researchers next performed a ‘sucralose preference test’ – allowing mice to choose to drink either water or water that had been artificially sweetened.

“Stressed mice on a high-fat diet consumed three times more sucralose than mice that were on a high-fat diet alone, suggesting that stress not only activates more reward when eating but specifically drives a craving for sweet, palatable food,” says Professor Herzog.

“Crucially, we did not see this preference for sweetened water in stressed mice that were on a regular diet.”

Stress overrides healthy energy balance

“In stressful situations it’s easy to use a lot of energy and the feeling of reward can calm you down — this is when a boost of energy through food is useful. But when experienced over long periods of time, stress appears to change the equation, driving eating that is bad for the body long term,” says Professor Herzog.

The researchers say their findings identify stress as a critical regulator of eating habits that can override the brain’s natural ability to balance energy needs.

“This research emphasises just how much stress can compromise a healthy energy metabolism,” says Professor Herzog. “It’s a reminder to avoid a stressful lifestyle, and crucially – if you are dealing with long-term stress – try to eat a healthy diet and lock away the junk food.”

Source: Garvan Institute of Medical Research