After the last post, I thought you might want something uplifting: Research presented last week at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting indicates that sweets relieve stress. This may not be news to many of us, but now we know why it works: sweets cause the body to produce lower levels of glucocorticoid stress hormones. While these hormones have some protective qualities, they have also been linked to a weakened immune system and increased abdominal fat. Does that mean that if you eat a donut to relieve stress, the decrease in glucocorticoids will prevent the increase in abdominal fat, and balance out the weight gain from the donut? Hmm. Probably not, and scientists warn that further research may show fruits or vegetables to be just as effective at reducing glucocorticoids. Still, it makes a good argument, in the same way that one can claim chocolate is a vegetable since it’s made from cocoa beans.