Sugar and Stress

There is good clinical research that verifies what most of us knew all along, that eating refined sugars helps to reduce one's perception of stress and anxiety. Both patients and physicians alike have noticed that stress, especially chronic stress, can increase the desire for and the consumption of palatable comfort foods which are usually high in refined sugars. Research in a recent Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, June 2015100(6):2239-2247, concluded "These experimental findings support a metabolic-brain-negative feedback pathway that is affected by sugar and may make some people under stress more hooked on sugar and possibly more vulnerable to obesity and its related conditions." It seems to me that if we want to stay healthy and remain at a healthy weight, then our job is to find other coping mechanisms than eating high sugar and fat comfort foods when we are 'stressed-out'.