Eating Salad For Dinner Is Less Healthy If You’ve Had a Stressful Day

Being you is stressful AF.

And yet, despite your Tinder beau not replying on WhatsApp and your boss finding out that your "flu" yesterday was actually more of a midweek hangover, you feel pretty smug when you're able to rise above it all and have a quinoa salad for dinner, rather than the stress-busting pizza you really wanted.

Don't be too pleased with yourself, though. A new study suggests that if you've had a stressful day, healthy eating counts for nothing.

Researchers from the Institute for Behavioural Medicine at Ohio State University conducted stress tests and took blood samples from 58 women after they had eaten a breakfast high in good or bad fats.

The results, published this week in the Molecular Psychiatry journal, showed that, "When women in the study had a stressful event before the breakfast test, the hardships of the previous day appeared to erase any benefits linked to the healthy fat choice."

There goes that smug smile.

On two separate days, the women involved in the study were randomly assigned one of two breakfasts: one high in less healthy saturated fat from palm oil and one containing healthier, unsaturated fat from sunflower oil. Afterwards, researchers tested the women's blood for indicators of inflammation and artery-clogging plaque. Stress levels were rated using what the researchers dubbed a "Daily Inventory of Stressful Events."

Unsurprisingly, markers of inflammation and plaque were higher in those eating the saturated fat meal but researchers also found that, "In those women who had stressful days, the difference disappeared. Eating a breakfast with bad fat was just the same as eating one with good fat."

Not that this means having a bad day allows you to have your cake and eat it.

Martha Belury, human nutrition professor and co-author of the study, said in a press statement that the message of the study is not that we can get a free pass for eating when stressed. Instead, she said the study's findings could "serve as a reminder to shoot for healthier choices every day so that when stress gets in your way you're starting in a better place."

But after a hectic day, who's really going to say no to a slice of cheesy carbs?