8 foods and drinks that make you seriously grumpy

Not every meal makes you happy and cheerful. Some dishes can leave you in a downright shitty mood. How come? And which groceries are best skipped if you want to keep things reasonably pleasant at home?

Nutrition scientist Claudia Smith has discovered that so-called comfort food is actually bad for your mood. All that sugar and carbohydrates give you a sugar rush, after which you become grumpy, tired and scatterbrained.

Comfort food? No?

Huh? But isn’t it called comfort food because it makes you feel better? True, says the scientist, but that’s because we see this food as a reward. You’re heartbroken or stressed, so you allow yourself to eat an entire tube of Pringles – like now, during coronavirus times. Have we all become more cheerful and happier because of it? Not really. And Smith doesn’t find that surprising. She provides a list of eight things that demonstrably worsen your mood.

1. Alcohol

Headache, heartburn, poor sleep, hangover: do you need any more reasons? A little alcohol isn’t harmful; generally, it even makes you a bit more cheerful, but too much booze – and according to the expert, that’s already more than one glass a day – can ruin your mood, especially the next day.

2. Soft drinks

Soft drinks are packed with sugar, which is quickly absorbed by your body. The result: a sugar rush, followed by a drained feeling. Diet soft drinks then? Maybe not, because too much aspartame has been linked to mild depression and anxiety disorders. So stick to water and tea, Smith advises.

3. Coffee

A cup of comfort, as it’s called for good reason. But don’t have too much, says British dietitian Tai Ibitoye, because too much caffeine makes you nervous and irritable. The Netherlands Nutrition Centre recommends a maximum of four cups of coffee a day.

4. Pie, cake, cookies

If it were up to the experts, we’d only be able to buy pie and cookies secretly from dealers on the street corner. Every tasty pastry naturally contains sugar, which we’ve already grumbled about, combined with fat, such as butter, and carbohydrates: it could hardly be worse. But wait a minute: other research shows that baking a cake is actually good for stress!

5. French fries

Also on the list of forbidden foods. Too salty, the experts say, too much saturated fat and then all those carbohydrates as well. Belgium, are you reading along? As substitutes, they recommend quinoa and brown rice.

6. Bad snacks

You were afraid of this: chips, pizza rolls, frikandels and other so-called processed foods are bad, worse, worst. They cause an energy spike, followed by a kind of food coma. Something tasty is absolutely allowed, the experts say, but remove these snacks from your weekly menu and eat them only occasionally as an extra treat.

7. Donuts

The road to hell is paved with… donuts, according to the nutrition experts. It’s not hard to imagine why: carbohydrates, sugar, fat. And there may be a strawberry or raspberry in the filling, but nowhere near enough to count toward the recommended two hundred grams of vegetables and two pieces of fruit. Dietitian Ibitoye’s tip: a slice of brown bread is just as tasty.

8. Ham, sausage and other processed meats

Most processed meats are very salty and also contain lots of preservatives and flavour enhancers, none of which are particularly healthy. Of course, you can prepare things yourself: instead of ready-made chicken breast for your sandwich, you can bake or grill a chicken fillet and slice it. Nutrition scientists do see one advantage to processed meats: they contain a lot of protein, which should actually improve your mood.

So are we not allowed anything anymore?

A list guaranteed to make you pretty grumpy, to be honest. Are we really not allowed anything anymore? If you’ve been feeling not quite yourself, sluggish and depressed for a while, it’s not a bad idea to look at what you eat in a day – perhaps a salad will cheer you up more than yet another bag of Chocotofs. But stress-eating a parking ticket with a bag of M&M’s won’t send you spiralling into clinical depression, and a bottle of prosecco to celebrate a new assignment won’t turn you into a sour alcoholic either. You know what, we’ll think about it a little longer. Who’s having the last slice of cake? Homemade, to beat the stress!

Read also:

• Are raw vegetables healthier than cooked vegetables?
• Work out with bottles of wine: bye-bye, gym!
• 11 things about sushi you didn’t see coming

Source: HuffPost