Nk. Dess et al., THE INTERACTION OF DIET AND STRESS IN RATS - HIGH-ENERGY FOOD AND SUCROSE TREATMENT, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes, 24(1), 1998, pp. 60-71
Exposure to inescapable shock typically reduces eating and body weight
in rats. The present study examined the modulation of stress effects
by prestress diet and poststress sugar availability. Maintenance on a
high-fat, high-energy food attenuated stress-induced weight loss and a
norexia and increased high-energy food selection when a low-energy wet
mash was the only alternative. Access to sugar after stress also redu
ced short-term weight loss; among rats maintained on high-energy food,
body weight was spared absolutely. The dependence of stress effects o
n pre-and poststress diet alternatives may speak to individual differe
nces in the stress-eating relationship in humans. More generally, thes
e results support a conceptualization of stress in terms of metabolic
challenge and the integrated reorganization of energy regulatory proce
sses.