If you love high-fat comfort food, a new study may give you more reason to eat it.

It seems that comfort food really can increase happiness and relieve stress. The findings may even hold the key to understanding and possibly overcoming the obesity epidemic.

Margaret Morris — Professor at the School of Medical Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Australia — and her team researched the effects of comfort food on stressed animals.

The scientists separated some baby rats from their mothers shortly after birth.

The Sugary Results

Using a sugar drink, Professor Morris showed that the stressed rats were less able to sense pleasure than rats who hadn’t been separated from their mothers.

Half of the stressed rats were fed a regular diet; the other half were placed on a high-fat diet.

Using a sugar drink again, the researchers found that stressed rats eating a normal diet seemed depressed. They showed little interest in the drink.

But the stressed rats on the high-fat diet enjoyed the sugar drink as much as the rats who’d never been separated from their mothers.

So What Does This Mean?

Professor Morris concluded that the high-fat diet helped to counteract the trauma of the separation.

Which is a fancy way of saying junk food made the little rats feel better.

The scientists also found that the stressed rats on a high-fat diet were less afraid of bright light than stressed rats on a regular diet.

More evidence that comfort food makes you feel better. And apparently makes you bolder as well.

The Possible Link To The Human Obesity Epidemic

Professor Morris believes the rats offer a good model for human behavior.

For example, people who react strongly to stress are the most likely to overeat. With the increasing stress levels in society, we may be choosing to eat comfort food to feel better.

The findings of this study suggest it’s not our fault. Eating junk food may be a biological response to stress instead of a social behavior.

Professor Morris also believes that early life stresses may have a long-lasting influence on how we respond to stress — including whether we overeat and choose fatty foods.

This suggests that the key to solving the obesity epidemic may be to address our response to stress. Or find a way to reduce stress.

But while I won’t argue with the claim that comfort food makes you feel better, I do think you can control how much of it you eat.

I also believe it’s too easy to blame the obesity epidemic on a biological response. From personal experience, I know you can include comfort food in a diet and still lose weight.