Despite the temptation to curb your nerves before a busy day at work with some comfort food, studies suggest that eating too late can significantly hinder your productivity the next day.
A North Carolina State University study recruited 97 full-time employees and interviewed each participant three times a day for 10 days about their physical and emotional well-being before and after work. In the evening, they were asked about their eating and drinking habits when they got home. 'Bad' eating behaviours were described as overindulging in food or alcohol, or eating too much junk food before they turned in for the night.
Unsurprisingly, they found a correlation between bad eating behaviours with physical problems the next day, such as headaches, stomach aches and diarrhoea. As well as the physical effects of unhealthy eating, the psychological effects had a huge impact on their performance the next day. (Continued below)
Participants experiencing physical and emotional side effects of their late-night feast reported declines in "helping behaviours", such as helping their colleagues when they don't have to. Generally, they were also more withdrawn from work-related situations, despite being in the workplace.
"For the first time, we have shown that healthy eating immediately affects our workplace behaviours and performance," says Seonghee Cho, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. "It is relatively well established that other health-related behaviours, such as sleep and exercise, affect our work. But nobody had looked at the short-term effects of unhealthy eating."
So if you want to turn up to work fresh and ready, it could be a smart move to stick to a healthy, early dinner and save the indulgences for the weekend. Preparing your meals and freezing them before your workweek is a great way to have healthy food ready to go on the nights when you just don't feel up to cooking. Kicking back with a beer or glass of wine might give you temporary stress relief, but alcohol can disturb sleep and affect your neurotransmitters making you feel more anxious the next day.
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