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Put Down The Doughnuts: Fattier Foods May Be Making You More Emotional

by Eitan Levine

There is a good chance all that comfort food is actually making you feel terrible about yourself.

A new study released by the Journal of Health Psychology found unhealthy foods can have a negative effect on your emotional health and emotional awareness.

Through a study done on 1,699 men and 3,293 women, researchers found subjects had a harder time regulating their emotional states if their diets consisted of foods higher in trans fats.

They also found these same people were very much unaware of their emotional states.

Basically, eating unhealthy food can lead to you being emotional and not knowing it, and anyone who has been in a subway car after 2 am on a weekend knows that's the worst combination.

The study also found people on the reverse side of the diet spectrum -- aka your friend who runs before work -- tended to be in happier moods and better at regulating their emotions.

There is a little bit of a catch-22 here that needs to be acknowledged, however.

We've all had moments of feeling like human garbage, and we've all found comfort in the form of copious amounts of Cinnabon. And that just made us feel worse about ourselves.

What came first? The depressed chicken or the sugar-glazed egg?

Because of this, it should be noted the study only found a correlation between eating unhealthy foods and your emotional health. It was not determined if eating unhealthy foods directly caused these problems.

Not everyone goes into an emotional black hole after eating a box of Entenmann's -- just some people.

So the next time you're planning on rectifying your bad mood with a pint of Moose Tracks and a glass of wine, maybe go for a run instead.

OK, that's a bit much. Def keep the wine.

Citations: Is The Food You Eat Making You Emotional (Bustle)