title: The interaction of diet and stress in rats: high-energy food and sucrose treatment.
abstract: 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 anorexia and increased high-energy food selection when a low-energy wet mash was the only alternative. Access to sugar after stress also reduced short-term weight loss; among rats maintained on high-energy food, body weight was spared absolutely. The dependence of stress effects on pre- and poststress diet alternatives may speak to individual differences in the stress-eating relationship in humans. More generally, these results support a conceptualization of stress in terms of metabolic challenge and the integrated reorganization of energy regulatory processes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California. dessnk@oxy.edu
authors.forename: N K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Dess
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Choe
authors.forename: T R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Minor
mesh_terms: D000824:Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D000818:Animals; D001835:Body Weight; D002149:Energy Intake; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D051381:Rats; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000523:psychology*; D013395:Sucrose / Q000378:metabolism*; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D013395:Sucrose