8x Food that makes you mega grumpy

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: 8x food that makes you mega grumpy.

Not every meal makes you happy and cheerful. Some dishes can leave you with a downright bad mood. How come? And which groceries should you better skip if you want to keep things a bit cozy at home?

Nutritionist Claudia Smith has discovered that so-called comfort food is actually not good for your mood. All that sugar and carbohydrates give you a sugar rush, after which you become grumpy, tired, and distracted.

Comfort food? No?
Huh? But isn't it called comfort food because it lifts your spirits? That's right, says the scientist, but that's because we see that food as a reward. You have heartbreak or stress, and so you allow yourself to eat a whole tube of Pringles, like now, during corona time. Have we all become happier and cheerier from it? Not really. And Smith doesn't find that strange. She provides a list of eight things that can demonstrably worsen your mood.

1. Alcohol
Headaches, heartburn, a bad night's sleep, a hangover: do you need more reasons? A little alcohol isn't bad, it generally even makes you a bit cheerier, but too much alcohol – 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
Soda is packed with sugars that are quickly absorbed by your body. Result: a sugar rush and then a drained feeling. Diet soda then? Maybe not, because too much aspartame is linked to mild depression and anxiety disorders. So stick to water and tea, advises Smith.

3. Coffee
A cup of comfort, it's not called that for nothing. But don't take too much, says British dietitian Tai Ibitoye, because too much caffeine makes you nervous and irritable. The Nutrition Center advises a maximum of four cups of coffee per day.

4. Cake, pastries, cookies
If it were up to the experts, we could only secretly buy cake and cookies from dealers on the corner of the street. Every tasty pastry contains sugar, and we've already complained about that, combined with fat, like butter, and carbohydrates: it can't get much worse. But wait a minute: another study shows that baking a cake is actually good for stress!

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

6. Bad snacks
You were already afraid of this: chips, pizza rolls, frikandellen, and other so-called processed foods are bad, worse, worst. They cause a spike in energy and then a kind of food coma. Something tasty is certainly allowed, say the experts, but remove these snacks from the weekly menu and eat them very occasionally as a treat.

7. Donuts
The road to hell is paved with... donuts, according to nutritionists. Not hard to figure out why: carbohydrates, sugar, fat. And in the filling, there might be a strawberry or a raspberry, but not nearly enough to count towards the two hundred grams of vegetables and two pieces of fruit. Tip from dietitian Ibitoye: a brown sandwich is just as tasty.

8. Ham, sausage, and other cold cuts
Most cold cuts are very salty and also contain many preservatives and flavor enhancers: all not so healthy. Of course, you can get to work yourself: instead of ready-made chicken breast for on bread, you can fry or grill a chicken breast and slice it. The nutrition scientists see as an advantage of cold cuts that they contain a lot of protein, and that could actually improve your mood.

So nothing is allowed anymore?
A list to become quite grumpy from, to be honest. Can't have anything anymore? If you've been feeling not great, sluggish, and down for a while, it's not a bad idea to take a look at what you eat in a day; maybe a salad cheers you up more than yet another bag of Chokotoffs. But munching away a parking fine with a bag of M&M's won't push you to the brink of a 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 bit more. Who takes the last slice of cake? Home-baked, against the stress!

Source: Huffpost