College students usually face much more stress when it comes to the time of deadlines or exams. Different people have different ways of releasing their stress for example eating, listening to music or sleeping. Most people choose to eat when they are under pressure and they have varieties of food. However, from my own experience and observation, those people prefer to have junk food than the ordinary one they have. This leads me to a question, why do they behave like that?
According to a study recently by Silvia Maier, people are more likely to have junk foods instead of healthy food under this circumstance and this desire can even go against the brains. In order to find out the relationship between stress and food habit, Maier does an experiment that divides the volunteers into two groups which one of them is given pressure and other one not and record their choose of food. The result is she successfully rejects the null hypothesis and finds that coloration. This is a single- blind experiment which makes a comparison between people who are under stress and people who are not. The brain scan afterwards help proves the caution between pressure and choice of food. The mechanism of why our brain will choose unhealthy food under pressure is also illustrated to state that the connection does exists. The data is correct or false positive and if the test is repeated, the same conclusion is likely to make.
Although this test seems to be completed enough, there still exists the possibility that the conclusion Maier makes is wrong. There may be third variables that affect the result like the different food cultures of different people, the different mental feelings of people whose hands are in cold water, chance and so on. Moreover, since this test is a single- blind test, the researchers may become subjective when treating two groups of people that may mislead to a false conclusion. All these factors can challenge this coloration and maybe able to reject it. Just like what is mentioned in the article, more researches should made in order to justify further about this theory.
On the other hand, if this conclusion is trustable, this reminds us of what we are going to choose as our food when we are facing stress. Junk food may not be our first choice in normal life but who knows what we will do in anxiety?
I really liked this article as well! It justified why i always crave so much chocolate when I’m stressing something. It made me feel like there was a reason behind it that i never understood before. I thought that the experiment was reliable too and you explained it very well.
Oh my god your topic is really interesting! I always eat junk food when I am under pressure, this makes my weight increase a lot and my mother always blame me because of eating those food. The study you provide is experimental and is reliable. I like the way you analyse the study, it convince us to trust the result. As you said, there are third variable that can lead to false result, so this theory still need to be tested in the future.I was disturbed by this for a long time and your blog really remind me to stop eating junk when rushing for the deadline. I don’t know whether you have this worry as well. I have found a blog about the ways to reduce anxiety. Take a look at it, it might be helpful for you!
This article is very interesting because it is so relatable to college students and what they are faced with regarding unhealthy options. I find personally that healthy food options help me when I am under stress but I think it depends person to person. It’s also important to note that correlation does not prove causation and that because someone is stressed they will only reach for unhealthy options. Anyways really well done!